


Embrace the Enemy Within

by Phantomgirl17



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Addiction, Blood and Gore, Gen, Mild Language, Minor Character Death, Minor Character(s), Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:37:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 70,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomgirl17/pseuds/Phantomgirl17
Summary: Danny knew that not another person would understand the pain of being beaten up by a ghost, bleeding more than it’s healthy to, losing too much blood to still feel even partially human. Every time a ghost attacked someone, when the ghost boy checked on them they never even had a scratch on them from falling. It was like this town had invented a way to make it so that nothing could hurt them. So Danny knew that nobody would know his pain even if they claimed that they did. But they would know soon, Danny knew that as certain as he knew he had a ghost half. He would make sure that the whole town felt the pain they claimed to know but had never experienced.Danny was going to make sure of it.





	1. The Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> And the start of a new story begins! I kinda just thought this up in the middle of class and typed it out in my free time. I really haven't thought through the rest of the plot, so I'm not sure if it will be posted, or completed, or if this is just a one-shot... I don't really know. Honestly, I'm totally open to suggestions and I do have ideas that I could use to keep this story going.  
> Just let me know if you would like to read more for the plot, if you want me to post the rest of the chapters, or if you have any suggestions for how to make my stories any better.  
> I seriously have a ton of ideas just running through my head at all times, but I am always open to your ideas or requests. Seriously, always. Don't be afraid to ask.  
> And like I said, I've got places for this story to go, so just let me know if you'd like to see more to the story.  
> Also, please be careful. While I did rate this as "Mature" audience material, it could be seen as worse. You're reading this at your own risk. Muahahahahaha... but seriously. It's really up to you. I have friends who say that this isn't that bad, and friends who say it should be labeled as explicit. So I just stuck it in the middle.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave comments, suggestions, requests, or just messages.
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

“Danny, what are you doing?”

“What I should have done a long, long time ago.”

Danny's hands rose above his head, brushing past his glowing white hair, his eyes burning an eerie green as his hands charged ectoenergy around a small knife. He looked down at the girl at his mercy, his body shaking with energy, just waiting for tears to stream from her face before he struck her with the sharp tip of the knife.

“Why are you doing this?”

The girl leaned up against the back wall of the alley the two were hidden away in. Nobody could see them, nobody could hear them at the moment, but the security camera across the street could see everything that happened, and while it could not hear anything it saw, and recorded, everything that happened.

Danny lowered his head, his eyes changing from their usual toxic green to a deep red, a strange glow coming from them.

“Because I have to.”

“But… you don’t…”

The girl’s breathing had become labored from her fear and the broken rib in her chest from Danny beating her to the ground, forcing her into the lightless alleyway. She attempted to stand, only to have her knees kicked from behind as Danny forced her to the ground once again. Tears fell from her eyes causing Danny to grin as his eyes looked back upwards, the knife he didn’t realize he had lowered to his side rising back to the air, charging with red energy rather than green this time.

“I do have to. You have no say in what I do and don’t have to do.”

He lowered the knife to the young girl’s arm, singeing the hairs on her forearm with the energy radiating off of his weapon. A small slice began on her forearm and as Danny felt that energizing feeling of somebody else’s pain, of drawing blood from somebody else for once, of having somebody else understand the pain he went through, he lost control of himself.

Danny sliced deeper into the girl’s arm, deeper and deeper until he felt his knife hit bone, and then he sent energy through his hand and snapped the bone in half, her forearm falling limp as she screamed in pain and terror. He lunged at her and dropped his knife, sent his hands, charged with ectoenergy, into her midsection to leave burn marks all over her body. He poured his energy into his hands and used it to punch her so hard her intestines protruded from her mouth and slid down her face and neck like a snake until they were lying in her lap.

Danny continued to use his energy to keep her alive, to force her to feel this pain, even as she lost organs and her arm. His energy let him burn through her skin and muscle tissue, revealing her inner sections. Danny forced her heart to stop beating but continued to keep her alive, to make her feel pain like he did. He pulled her lungs away from her ribs, punctured each one at least three times with his knife before slicing her stomach open, ripping her legs from her pelvis, and slitting her throat with his energy to keep her from screaming. Nothing but gurgling came from her mouth as blood ran down her body and came up through her mouth, a psychotic laugh leaving Danny’s own lips. He saw her eyes sinking and recharged the energy keeping her alive.

“Oh, we aren’t done yet.”

Danny fell to his knees and ripped her appendix out of her body, tearing it in half over her head, the inner contents falling down her hair and face. He began to look at her face, fear filled her eyes. He laughed again as he burned her cheeks, leaving nothing but the tissue from her charred muscles and skin. Danny grabbed his knife from the ground and stabbed her left eye, twisting as she tried to scream but only spat out blood. He yanked his knife out, her eye coming with it. Danny pulled his hand intangibly through her head, pulling her other eye out and leaving it sitting in her lap, looking up at him in fear. She saw her organs and limbs scattered on the ground. Each one destroyed beyond repair. He pulled her kidneys from her abdomen and snapped them like kidney beans that hadn’t been cooked yet. His laughter echoed around him, but not a soul from the town heard him but the girl.

“Don’t worry. It will all be over soon.”

Danny whispered to the girl as he charged a large ghost ray and aimed his right arm at what looked like the side of her head. As he brought his arm back into aim he blasted her skull, bone fragments and the inner section of her brain raining down upon them both and splattering up against the wall. He poked through her brain and left half of it on the ground, the other half as a soup in her head after he used more ectoenergy to melt it to a puddle. Finally, he sighed after another round of his laugh.

“That’s enough damage for today, don’t you think?”

He asked the girl who was far beyond gone as he removed his energy from her body. Then he slit her body everywhere else that he hadn’t destroyed and watch blood pool around her on the cold, damp ground covered in organs and burnt skin. Danny kicked her one whole eye out of her lap and rolled it on the ground a few times before putting enough body weight on it that it popped, liquid running out of it from three sides, the outer layers looking like they had popped like popcorn kernels. He smiled as he picked his knife up and let his energy burn it, the metal melting, the handle catching flame and disintegrating to nothing but a pile of ash.

“Not too bad for a first try.”

Danny flew off as fast as he could, his body aching to do it again as he lost control of his senses in the cold air of October in Amity Park. He pictured the girl before he did any damage, before even the first bruise. She had been pretty, but even those who looked pretty were able to feel pain. Danny then thought of how she looked after he was done with her, unrecognizable to anyone unless they really tried to see who she was. Nobody would be able to figure out that Danny Phantom had violently and mercilessly killed the young Sam Manson. Nobody except the security camera that Danny hadn’t thought about before he began his unregretted actions.

Danny flew through the sky, his hair whipping him in the face. An annoyed sigh escaped his lips as he pulled his hair from his mouth. It had been warm the day before, but the cold, numbing wind blew around Danny’s body. He felt nothing from killing Sam, he only felt good with himself for not getting caught. A smile curved upwards as he thought about what he had done.

With no ability to recognize Sam, nobody would know who died, or what happened to him or her. Still, the feelings that had brought him to killing Sam lurked in Danny’s heart, sinking farther into his body as he flew, tearing him apart from the inside.

“It had been HER fault that I became part ghost,” Danny started. “She was the one who made me become a ‘hero’ and try to protect the town. She was the one who felt nothing from my fights and then acted like she was more hurt than me.”

Danny stopped above a lake, turned himself around and yelled to the middle of nowhere.

“She was the one who caused me to feel the pain from my ghost half, she nearly killed me and never once felt her own pain, and she led me to think that if I got better I would never feel pain! But it doesn't work like that! I’ve been destroyed, weakened, hurt, damaged, tortured, and all for nothing! I took on everyone else’s pain, thanks to her, and not once did anything change. My parents hate me, I’m failing school, my sister is stressed, and I’m constantly in pain that she claimed to understand but didn’t know.”

Danny looked to a reflection on the lake. Red eyes gleamed back at him as he floated in the air, his body screaming at him to destroy the rest of the people in town who thought they knew him. Everyone loved Danny Phantom except him… and his parents of course, but they didn’t matter.

“Nobody in town knows what their ‘hero’ feels… they don’t know what I go through. I wonder what would happen if I let all Hell break loose on them… They want a hero? Maybe they can try being their own for once!”

An evil laugh broke from the young boy’s lungs as he flew back to Amity Park, his eyes still glowing red and his face still in a scowl as he came up with his plan. The entire city would want him to protect them, but when Danny didn’t do anything they would have to come up with a new plan to protect themselves. Another maniacal laugh escaped the mouth of the kid as he thought about letting some ghosts go and telling them to attack his town for him. That would get interesting responses from both the ghosts and the people who lived in his city.

“There might be something about this I like.”

Danny floated high above the center of town, speaking so softly nobody could hear him but it came out of his mouth.

“For once I can be a normal ghost! I can wreak havoc and let myself go, I can stop worrying about missing school, I can stop worrying about having to make people like me. And now that Sam is out of the picture, I can have my own freedom without being in the pain that nobody else understands!”

Anger burst from his chest as he screamed that nobody understood his pain. He saw a man pop his head out of the window, but rolled his eyes at it to ignore him. He flew off towards his house, his body in pain, but this time only sore from how long he had been flying rather than the pain nobody else understood, even if they claimed they knew the pain as well as he did. 

Danny knew that not another person would understand the pain of being beaten up by a ghost, bleeding more than it’s healthy to, losing too much blood to still feel even partially human. Every time a ghost attacked someone, when the ghost boy checked on them they never even had a scratch on them from falling. It was like this town had invented a way to make it so that nothing could hurt them. So Danny knew that nobody would know his pain even if they claimed that they did. But they would know soon, Danny knew that as certain as he knew he had a ghost half. He would make sure that the whole town felt the pain they claimed to know but had never experienced.

Danny was going to make sure of it. As a ghost, he had never been wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, I know it's not very long, and my notes are probably pretty annoying, but I am trying to decide what I do with this, so please just let me know if you want me to carry the story on (It's totally possible, I've already got a strong idea of where this is going!) and I am always open to requests! Just let me know what kinds of stories you want next!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	2. Omnipotent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think I'm gonna go on with this story. I know it's been a super long time since I updated it, but the idea of where to take it kinda hit me while I was in the middle of studying for finals, so I just decided to go on with the plot. I really hope you all enjoy, and just let me know if you have any comments, questions, ideas, or requests! Have fun reading!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Danny looked at the ceiling as his alarm went off. His arm smashed the snooze button and he rolled over onto his left side, his face finding a warm place to lay against the pillows and blankets he was laying among. Danny thought with his eyes closed, waiting to see what happened after Sam went missing the night before.

Nobody had really thought about her, nobody at school but him and Tuck, her parents always thought she was with one of her friends, and the teachers never bothered to do anything with her whenever she did something. Danny snickered. The next person to see her would only see a dead body. He wasn’t even sure if they would be able to tell if it was a male or female that had been killed, and it was all thanks to him.

The alarm went off again and Danny groaned. It had already been ten minutes? He looked at the clock and smacked it as he saw the time, groggily pulling himself out of bed against his will. Whispering to himself as he finished showering and choosing an outfit for the day.

“I’m half ghost, I shouldn’t have to get up for school…”

Danny grumbled, pulling his usual T-shirt and jeans out of the closet, a pair of socks from his drawer and a hoodie from the back of his door.

Danny looked to his hands as he got dressed, laying his shirt on his bed after pulling his jeans on. They glowed a vibrant shade of red. It was unusual but felt much more natural than the neon green he had been glowing for the past several months.

“Weird…”

Danny mumbles to himself as he forced the glow to weaken until nothing but human looking hands were before him and he yanked his shirt over his head, hearing his sister call to him that it was time to leave. His shoes were downstairs and he grabbed his backpack as he ran out the door to his room and down the large flight of stairs.

“Danny!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Jeez, you’re really impatient, Jazz.”

Danny smiled as he got a glare from his sister and they walked out the door, Danny still trying to tie one shoe as he walked next to his sister on the sidewalk.

“Why did you have to go to a college so close to home anyway?”

Danny felt a growl rise in his chest, his ghost half nearly out of control as he questioned his sister, her steps shorter than his but more frequent making her faster on her feet. But what did a half ghost kid need his feet for when he could fly faster than anyone he knew?

“I didn’t want to be far from home. I would have missed you and mom and dad. Not to mention that I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you to make sure our senior gets to school on time every day.”

Jazz ruffled his hair and Danny felt the growl escape his lips.

“I can get where I need to be on time.”

Jazz took a step back as he answered her, his eyes flashing from their usual blue to a mix between the red and green his ghost half was capable of pulling off.

Danny watched Jazz as she pulled her phone out, but he didn’t see what she was doing. He heard a quick sigh as she put her phone in her pocket, a message being sent to Tucker that he needed to keep an eye on Danny today, that he was acting odd.

“What are you doing?”

Danny tried to see if Jazz’s phone lit up in any way, no matter what it lit up for. Maybe she knew what he had done and was going to reveal him to his parents. He felt his hands itching to steal her phone from her pocket and see what she had just done. He begged his hands to stay by his sides as they started walking again.

“Just texting one of my friends about an assignment she forgot to do last night. That’s all.”

Jazz shrugged as Danny gave off a suspecting look, his eyes flickering from red to blue as he tried to control his anger.

“You’re a liar.”

Jazz looked away from him, her heart sinking in fear to what he would become if he kept acting like this. She tore her gaze from a bird in the sky to try and confront her brother about why she was worried about him. She looked at an empty spot where her brother had been before, only seeing a small black spot in the sky, racing away from her, bright red energy flowing off in waves.

A nervous gasp escaped her mouth as she watched Danny fly off, and she quickly texted the group chat between her, Sam, and Tucker since Tucker hadn’t responded when Jazz texted him about Danny’s red eyes because he had more classes with Danny than Sam did. She heard her message send as she dashed down the street to try and catch up with the brother that was then flying away from her as fast as possible.

Danny looked at the ground, saw his sister running after him and felt hot, dangerous amounts of energy crackle around his body. The red energy flowing around him expanded for a moment as he sped himself up and got higher in the air to try and disappear.

“Duh…”

Danny smacked himself in the forehead with his hand as it shook and he turned himself invisible, forgetting that he could do that instead of just trying to get away from his sister’s vision. He saw her stop to rest, her eyes staring into the sky and scanning for him everywhere.

He smirked to himself seeing her give up with a frustrated few motions. She ran towards the high school as Danny flew above her to see where she was going. Danny saw her run up to Tucker, breathing hard as she came to a stop and got his attention. A smile faded from his face as he saw Jazz and he began to look nervous.

Danny flew behind a tree and returned himself to his human form, keeping himself invisible so they didn’t see him walking up behind them until he interrupted the conversation he figured was about him.

“Tucker, I think Danny’s out of his mind.”

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with him?”

“Red. Bright red. Energy, eyes, power, behavior… It’s like he’s become the opposite of what he always wanted to be.”

“You don’t think this could be stress, could it?”

“After this long? I thought he hit his breaking point years ago.”

“He’s a senior now. Could his ghost half still be stressing, but now the human half is stressing just as much. I mean, he’s applying for college right now and is really worried about making the colleges he’s trying to get into.”

“Tuck, I don’t think that’s it. Danny learned to cope with his stress, ghost and human stressors. He couldn’t be…”

“Jazz. Listen to me.”

She looked up from her feet that she had tilted her head towards in fear of the real answer.

“He’s probably just stressed. It’s a big part of his life. Maybe he finally hit a breaking point even he didn’t know how to deal with. Maybe it’s just the idea of failing after so long being a teenager who felt he could do anything cause of his powers.”

Jazz slightly nodded.

“What are we gonna do?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him today at school and then let you know what happens. Maybe it’s not as bad as we think it is.”

Tucker looked at Jazz again, and he quietly took his sleeve to her face to make sure her eyes were dry from the tears that he could see beginning to flow.

Danny turned his head back around the tree and let himself become visible again. He was too shaken to interrupt the conversation he had just heard. Did they think that he was really that weak? Did they just think he was stressed too much? They had no idea. Danny felt himself snap inside and turned himself back to Phantom, his mind racing as he flew to the skies, punching through the clouds overhead.

An angry scream released itself from his lungs, his throat burning as he continued to scream as hard as anyone physically could as a ghost. He saw Jazz and Tucker look up, fear on their faces.

“Danny…”

Jazz just barely let his name out with her breath.

Danny almost wanted to laugh as he flew away from his sister and so-called friend. He raced with the wind until he felt the burn from leaving the atmosphere in his lungs. Danny turned his head back towards earth and fell, let himself freefall most of the way until he made a sharp turn and landed in front of his ghost portal. He opened it and flew inside, the only two left that knew his secret not able to find him.

Danny found himself floating in front of a dark, swirling vortex. He stared into it with all of his mind begging him to enter the force. He looked back at the area around him, but none of it called to him more than this specific one. He took a deep breath and let his eyes fade to blood red. Whatever was in this darkness was going to be how he got rid of stress.

His mind whirled as he flew into pitch blackness. He almost felt himself get nauseated from how much his body was whirling in circles.

"What is this place?"

Danny couldn't help but scream to himself as he fell into a dark pit. A light appeared at the end of the tunnel for him, but it was only the beginning. He heard voices whispering around him.

"Welcome to the darkness."

"Welcome to our home."

"Welcome to your home."

Danny looked around him as he came to a stop at long last. He saw hooded figures floating around him in the deep, green and purple lighting.

"You guys? Aren't you the ghosts who originally took down the ghost king?"

Only what seemed to be a silent whisper echoed in Danny's mind as his questions were answered.

"Yes."

"Why am I here?"

Danny's voice seemed loud around him. These other ghosts spoke through his mind, not once a word leaving their mouths.

"We wanted you here. You are worthy. You are perfect."

"Am I now? Have you not seen what I've done?"

Danny nervously glanced around the dark area, the hooded figures floating closer to him, forcing themselves into slowly revolving around him as he tried to grasp what was going on.

"You have become more like us. You are perfect."

Red gleamed in Danny's eyes. He gave a toothy grin.

"Is that so?"

"You will be one with us. No longer under the control of the humans. No longer able to be tortured. No longer able to feel pain - mental or physical. You will be beyond perfect."

This struck Danny's attention.

"Go on?"

"You will be all powerful. Destroy everyone and everything in your path. They know nothing about pain. It is time to teach them a lesson. It is time to show them your true potential. It is time to overpower."

"So you're just saying I should be this quote-un-quote evil?"

"You already are. Feel it deep within. You already killed a young, innocent girl without a real reason. You have joined us without knowing it."

"I like where this is going."

"You will be beyond perfect. You will be all mighty. You will be the new Ghost King."

"That sounds nice... Where do I start?"

Red energy beamed from Danny in all directions. The colors known to represent rage and death surrounding him. He held his hands up.

"You will start by destroying the remaining two who know about your ghost half in the human world."

A blur of Jazz and Tucker came into Danny's view as the forms around him conjured it to let him see. He smiled and cracked his neck and knuckles loudly.

"With pleasure."

He didn't have to wait much longer before he finally saw emotion from the ones allowing him to have the power he deserved from his years of suffering. He saw one small smirk on one of the ghosts as he held his fists up. Danny began to ask another question, but before he could the formless, cloaked ghosts began to speed up their twirling dance around him until they were gyrating around Danny.

He felt himself falling again and quickly closed his eyes to keep from feeling sick. He felt himself stop moving and opened his eyes again, to find himself blinded by the light from the real world, his body collapsed on his bed in his human home. He looked at the clock. It had been six hours since he had gotten to the Ghost Zone.

"For only a short conversation, that took a really long time."

Danny rubbed at his head to try and relieve his pounding headache. He thought back to what was said to him. He had to kill Jazz and Tucker. Fine by him. Those two had just assumed everything about him - including why he was acting "odd" when they could have just asked him - talked to his face about it. Danny snickered.

"I guess they don't know what assuming does."

"It makes an ass out of you and me. Yeah, we know what it does."

Danny jumped, his sister seeming to just appear in his doorway as he tried to calm himself down. He gave her an angry glare and tried to show as much hatred as possible.

"Danny, we need to talk."

"Oh yeah... Right. Like I would talk to you?"

Jazz walked into Danny's room and closed the door. The lock turned as Danny stood up and leaned on the wall with his arms crossed.

"What do you even want from me, Jazz?"

"What's happened to you? Are you just unable to cope with stress anymore? Wha... why are you being so... negative?"

"That doesn't even begin to describe me. You don't know me, Jazz. It's not just me being stressed as you assumed. It's not negativity. It's not anything you could come up with."

Danny took a breath and looked at his sister again. His anger burned in his eyes like a fire, pure red bleeding into the blue irises everybody in town knew Danny had been born with. Jazz saw that he was upset, saw that he had more emotion inside of him than she knew.

"Danny, please. Calm down."

"Calm down? Calm down?! You expect me to just calm down after almost four years of agony?"

Danny raised his voice enough that Jazz heard he was angry, but kept it quiet enough that their parents couldn't hear him from his room. His eyes were still glowing a bright crimson. Jazz started to back away. She was beginning to see the monster living in her brother. What had happened to the awkward, fun loving, goofball she had called her younger sibling?

"You don't get it, Jazz. I have had it with you humans acting like it is impossible for you to get hurt. I will not go through any more pain for you. I fight for myself, and myself only."

Danny kept inching closer to his sister, her eyes filled with fear as Danny became Phantom and light from his red energy bounced off the walls in his room.

"Four years of protecting humans from getting hurt, only to get myself hurt. Do you know how many broken bones I've had? Can you count how many times You've given me stitches? Do you know what it feels like to be used?"

Tears of anger and pain filled Danny's eyes as he stood over his sister. She had fallen to the floor against the wall in fear of him.

"Do you know how it feels to be used?!"

Danny screamed at his sister, not caring who could hear him.

"You pathetic little human beings have made yourself invincible to any pain. You've made it impossible for you to get hurt. But you still require me to protect you - all of you. But you gave me nothing to make me invincible. I go through agony trying to protect you because I just thought that was my job. But you're all using me. Everyone is."

Danny let tears stream from his eyes as he charged his energy.

"But not anymore."

He raised his hands above his head. Jazz almost screamed before thinking about what she knew to try and help Danny psychologically. Maybe even bring him back to the Danny she knew.

"Danny, wait! What about the people you protected because you loved them? What about Sam and Tucker."

"Sam is dead."

Danny's hands fell to his sides, still charged with ecto-energy that was gleaming red.

"I killed her. I killed her because it felt like she had killed a part of me."

Jazz gave a nervous glance at Danny, thinking that she was getting through to him. She watched a distorted look cross Danny's face and saw him pick his hands up again as fists, still by his midsection, still glowing red.

"Danny, why?"

"I just told you! No more humans saying they understand what I feel. They never will! You will never feel what I feel."

He looked to his sister, only to see tears flowing down her face.

"Do I scare you?"

He gave an evil grin with his question, almost proud of scaring his sister to death. She slowly began to nod her response, her brain trying to keep up with Danny as he gave off an evil cackle.

"Good. You better be scared."

Danny's glowing hands met with Jazz's midsection, her body wanted to cry out in pain, but her muscles refused to let her open her mouth. She felt Danny pick her up and float her into her own room, slicing down her sides and stomach with a blade made from his own energy as he laid her on her bed. He made sure to scar her wrists and her legs. His energy pulsed with a burning heat that Jazz could feel touching her neck. Danny slipped his small dagger into Jazz's stomach area and laughed.

"You will never know the pain I go through. Not even after this."

Danny pulled her intestines out of her stomach and tied them into a noose. He found the window had a nice bar above it and swung the rope over the supportive bar. Jazz felt her eyes grow wide as her brother tried to pick her up and place her on her side. He slit the side of her chest open and pulled out one lung, peeling it apart, layer after layer. He looked her in the eyes with a bored expression as he continued to torture her organs in front of her - making sure his energy kept pulsing so she could feel every part of what he was doing.

"Doesn't this feel great?"

Danny laughed and became more like what he had tried to avoid for years. Jazz saw him grab her intestines that were dangling from the support bar on the window. He pulled hard to make sure it could hold weight. Sadly, it was able to. Danny cut a deep slit in Jazz's arm, yanking a few strings of muscle out with the dagger, drenched in red blood that was now staining the floor.

"Stop, Danny. Please."

"Never again."

Danny picked his sister's body up off of her bed and forced her to stand under her own intestines. He forced her head into the slip and then stopped himself.

"I almost forgot."

Danny forced energy into his hands and reached it through Jazz's skull, her bone and flesh burning, charring, and melting together like hot crayons. He felt his hand land on her brain and removed half of it. The front half. The half that had been controlling who she was and how she acted. The half that thought it was okay for him to get hurt rather than any humans.

"I can't let this go on forever, as much as I wish I could."

He sent rays of ectoplasm into her eyes and blinded her before letting her fall, her neck snapping as her own intestines caught her in their grip. Danny watched for a moment, seeing blood drip onto the floor as his sister hung for a few minutes before deciding to burn all of her flesh to her bones and make it so nobody could tell who killed her. He made sure to slice off her arms and legs and leave them sitting still on her bed.

Danny laughed as he thought about what was happening.

"Does this make it a suicide since it was her own intestines that killed her?"

Jazz's body was only floating above the floor, obvious murder to anyone who walked in. Danny sighed, almost in disappointment.

"If only you had put up a fight."

He turned to see the door standing before him and unlocked it so that somebody would eventually find this dead body. His parents would probably suspect it was a ghost that did this, and then get so protective of Danny, and yet so hateful of Phantom. 

"I guess they just don't see the irony. So protective of their own son and trying to destroy him at the same time."

Danny laughed for a moment before fleeing to the skies once again. He saw the sunset taking over the day and smiled. Night was always going to be better than the bright, unwanted day. He saw Tucker's house from where he was floating and almost wanted to think about how he would kill his only other friend. He wouldn't need help, just a bit of practice when it came to hiding the bodies unless he wanted them in plain sight.

He squeezed his eyes shut and thought for a moment before going back to his parents' basement and standing in front of the portal that had given him his abilities, to begin with. He looked at it and thought back to when he had gotten his powers. It was thanks to Sam and Tucker, and they just wanted him to see what his parents had screwed up.

He remembered hearing Sam ask what the portal was supposed to do. He remembered hearing Tucker ask what it was like inside of it. Danny's emotions faded away and his eyes returned to their usual neon green. Then, he remembered the pain he felt after being pressured into walking into the portal and being fused with ghost energy.

Anger returned to Danny's mind. His rage settled in his mind and his eyes returned to a burning shade of red. He looked over at the portal again, remembering earlier that day when he discovered that an old, powerful group of ghosts were looking for him. They wanted him to be a part of them. They wanted him for HIM, not for protection, not as bait. for HIM.

Danny gave off a small glance at the stairs leading to the kitchen. He heard his mom shut the door without looking down to see the ghost boy.

"They really are clueless."

He made sure nobody could see or hear him before he looked back at the portal. He sighed deeply, his impatience beginning to gnaw at his brain.

"Here we are again. Here I stand, waiting to see what the ghost cult wants me to do after I kill Tucker. It will happen soon."

Danny whispered his last portion and felt a smile creep across his face. He heard a few eerie voices echo in his head.

"We are proud."

"You have accomplished what nobody else could."

"You are perfect."

"You are all powerful."


	3. Energy

Tucker looked up from his computer as he was typing his English paper. He heard a violent knock on the door to his house and quickly went to see what it was. He saw a figure outside the window, but the glare from the glass hid the person's face.

"It's 6 in the morning, who would come over that early?"

Tucker got a bad feeling in his gut as he looked out the window again, only for the figure to be gone. At least, he thought it was gone. He rubbed at his eyes, the dark circles underneath pronouncing themselves, even with his darker skin attempting to conceal the lack of sleep.

"Maybe I'm just going crazy cause of how tired I am."

Tucker began walking up to his room again, remembering how he had been up the whole night trying to finish a last-minute English report. He had barely made it back to his computer when he heard his mom call out to him.

"Tuck? Who was at the door?"

Tucker froze. He was paralyzed as fear filled his mind. His mom had heard the knock too, which meant he wasn't just going crazy. He looked out his window expecting to see a psychotic looking face, but only saw a tree and some guy dressed in all black who didn't look much older than him walking down the sidewalk.

"Umm... It was... It was nobody."

Tucker stuttered to his mom as she walked up to his room with a load of laundry in her hands.

"Okay. Well, here's your suit for that presentation in class today. Ironed and finally clean."

She smiled at him and set the basket of clothes on the floor right beside his bed. He looked over at her and smiled back, hiding the online chat tab from her as she walked over to give him a hug before she left. Tucker watched his mom leave, and once she couldn't see him anymore his smile dropped. He reopened the chat, a small group being the only one open.

A single message found itself on his screen, him sending it to the two other members in the group.

"Sam. Jazz. I think something is seriously wrong with Danny. It looked like he just tried to come to my house, but ran off when I went to answer the door. Where are you guys?"

Tucker sighed and leaned back in his chair, running his hands over his head as he waited to get an answer before leaving for school.

"I sure hope that everyone is okay."

. . .

Danny looked back at his clock with an angry growl as it went off.

"If I'm an all-powerful ghost king, then why am I getting up this early?"

He smacked the alarm to turn it off and started getting ready, his mind racing as he tried to plan out how to eliminate his last "friend" and then be made more powerful. He looked at the clock as he walked out the door in all black clothing. 5:30 AM. He jumped off the last step to his house and jogged down the street to Tucker's house.

"Maybe I'll just start with a scare. Maybe I'll just disappear when Tucker sees me. I'll make him scared for the day and then I can get rid of him after school."

Danny thought out loud as he jogged briskly on the sidewalk. He saw the light in Tucker's room on and glared at it.

"Two down, one to go."

Danny leaped at the front door and made sure it made a loud, obnoxious sound inside the house. He saw Tuck walking towards the front and disguised himself to just be like a shadow. He saw his friend shake his head in confusion when nobody was at the door. Danny almost laughed.

He started walking back to his house when he decided it would be better to scare Tucker even more. He tapped lightly on the glass of his friend's window and made sure he was unseen. He saw Tucker's eyes widen as he looked out the window. Danny began walking away but didn't know that Tucker had seen him leave.

He jogged back to his house and went back to his bedroom, pretending to still be asleep since he could hear his parents waking up at 6:30. His mind was still racing about his sister since he had just left the body. He wanted that satisfactory feeling of hurting somebody else rather than being hurt again. He needed to have that feeling to even feel like himself. Danny felt his heart race, he realized that he was addicted to murder.

"It's almost like it gets me high. It gives me power. It gives me sanity."

He stopped himself.

"I need it."

Danny quickly clenched his eyes shut again as the doorknob to his room began to wiggle slightly. His dad appeared in the doorway, tears streaming down his face as he tried to wake Danny.

"Danny, do you know what happened to your sister?"

Danny sat up and pretended to yawn while he stretched. His arms ached from how much energy he had been letting flow through them while he killed. Twice now had he killed someone. One person a night. Who would he have to siphon his energy for after Tucker was gone?

"No, I haven't seen her since yesterday. What's up?"

Danny pulled his covers around him to try and keep warm while he listened to his dad. He knew what Jack was going to say, why not just spit it out?"

"Danny, Jazz... Jazz is..."

The tears choked Jack, not to Danny's surprise, as he tried to explain where his favorite child was.

"Just spit it out already!"

Red flashed brightly in Danny's eyes as he frowned and clenched his hands into the tightest fists he had ever known. Jack gave him a look of surprise as he watched Danny try to calm down. He ran his fingers through his hair and politely asked Jack to continue.

"What happened?"

"Jazz is dead."

Danny gave off a fake look of shock as he heard the news his father was telling him, even though it wasn't anything new to him.

"You're kidding, right?"

Danny had to shut his mouth. He could hear his own sarcasm bleeding from his voice. He was having trouble hiding the new him.

"No. I'm not kidding. It looks like a brutal murder. She was... She was hung. With her own intestines. Her body was burnt to a crisp, her limbs laying on her bed, her brain destroyed..."

Jack began sobbing violently as Maddie walked in, her eyes red with tears. She had obviously been listening to what Jack had said.

"One of her lungs is in pieces just scattered on the floor. Her body is mutilated. Almost beyond recognition."

Maddie hugged Jack as she whispered her last sentence. Danny almost wanted to gag as he got up and got himself dressed in the bathroom.

"What are you doing?"

He walked in to find his parents still crying in his room after he was dressed and semi-decent. He had forgotten to mess with his hair to make it semi-neat.

"Your sister is dead, Daniel. What do you think you're doing?"

Maddie looked him up and down and saw his unusual black outfit. He glared at her in annoyance as she tried to make him feel emotions he knew he wouldn't.

"I'm going to school. You know, so I don't fail?"

He gave his parents another nasty look and grabbed his backpack. He started down the stairs while the adults remained where they were crying. He rolled his eyes violently, so hard that it hurt his eyes, as he pretended to leave the house. Open the door, close the door. His parents couldn't hear his footsteps as he walked to the basement instead of out to the sidewalk. He looked at the door to the portal.

Danny soon found himself walking into the Ghost Zone and becoming Phantom instead. He saw himself being pulled towards the middle of the Ghost Zone, and just let it happen. He saw the dark void come into view as he thought about what to say to his new cult. He watched as everything from the day before happened, just without so much spinning that he got confused. Danny watched himself fall into the darkness that he now found natural and saw the other ghosts surrounding him.

"You have killed your sister."

"You have succeeded halfway."

"You have shown more power."

Danny stared in shock. How could he already have more power? He had only killed one person, a defenseless person at that. He stopped thinking for a moment when he heard more of the ghosts echoing in his mind.

"You will reign soon."

"Only one left."

"Why are you here?"

He jumped at the question he was being asked.

"I... I wanted to be away from those humans. I needed to be around people of my kind."

Danny stuttered, and fear finally filled his mind as he realized what he had found earlier while lying in his bed and waiting on his parents to see Jazz.

"I wanted to know why I am addicted to killing."

"Your thirst for knowledge goes well with your thirst for power."

Danny gave the ghosts an odd look.

"Are you afraid of loving the idea of murder?"

"No, I... I just..."

Danny couldn't think of what to say. He thought carefully for a minute before fully responding. The silence the ghosts gave him almost awkward and uncomfortable.

"I just can't seem to live without the feeling I get when I am in the midst of killing. It's like I need it to survive. How do I have power if I just kill everyone I see?"

The ghosts started to twirl around him, so slowly that it was like they were frozen in time.

"Your power does not benefit from your addiction. But we can help. You will still be killing once you are in full power, just not every day like now. You will be beyond perfect."

"How?"

"Your power will be shown when you kill. It could be punishment, a showing, or even just a game to some people. Perhaps you make it a game that people can challenge you - your power will make sure you always win. It will make sure you always get to kill."

A glint of light beamed from Danny's eyes. The look of a murderer reflected in his face. His mind whirred as he thought about what he had been told.

"This pleases me."

Danny saw the ghosts looking at him with what seemed like joy, hope, and maybe even a hint of life. They seemed close to having human emotions around Danny being in his phase of wanting the power they were offering him. Danny didn't care, though. He just wanted power. He wanted the ability to teach people what he felt with his ghost powers. He wanted to be able to avoid being in his own pain all the time. Danny gave a grin to his thought.

"I won't let you down. I deserve this power. I deserve to be in control. Humans deserve the pain."

The other ghosts whirled around Danny, his body tingling as they wound their way around him. He coughed and saw blood leave his mouth. Bright red blood, not ectoplasm. He felt the tingles turn to razors, felt his body tremble as it felt like his inner portions were being ripped apart. He had to hold back his screams asking what was happening to him instead.

"What are you guys doing to me?"

Danny screamed mentally as he spat more blood from his mouth.

"You will know when you return to the human world."

Danny pinched his eyes shut, opening them to find himself lying on the floor of the lab. His breathing was heavy and labored as he laid on his back, his arms out to the sides of his body. He felt his head spinning as he tried to think over what had happened to him.

Danny heard his parents still upstairs in the kitchen, tears seemed to still be flowing from their eyes, which only made Danny want to hurl. There wasn't that much drama to Jazz being killed. They wouldn't even know that he did it. He tried to stand up, only to have his body yanked back down by a lack of feeling in his legs.

"Of course."

Danny forced his legs to wake from their sleep and made sure they were able to support him. A lingering pain inside his body kept him from running quickly, but he still took himself to the spare bathroom just a door away from the lab to try and calm himself down. Danny splashed water over his face to try and shake the feelings of pain that he had been trying to get rid of for a while now. He looked back at his human half in the mirror and stared at himself in shock.

His eyes were a natural red now.

Danny saw the glow from his irises and smiled. He pieced parts of himself together and came up with a solution for what had happened.

"They started to kill my human half. They are making me a whole ghost, making me more powerful. Just like they said they were gonna."

He gave off a laugh and forced himself to show his ghost half. It looked exactly the same as it had the past few days. Glowing red eyes, bright red ecto-energy radiating from his body, and an evil grin covering his face. A dark shadow fell over his eyes so all you could see was a red glow coming from the top half of his face.

"Much better."

Danny heard his parents coming down to the lab to try and get their minds off of Jazz. Work on their projects like they always did when something was bothering them. Destroying his kind seemed to be something they liked to do to ease their state of mind. He quietly forced himself to be in his human state and turned the lights off in the bathroom while he dried his face.

He slipped out of the bathroom only to be stopped by his mom.

"Danny, I didn't know you were down here."

Her voice was tired and frightened as she walked over and gave Danny a hug. He almost felt like she was crushing his ribs into dust, each second her grip getting tighter.

"Yeah, well. I'm here."

He gave her a fake grin and began off towards the stairs.

"Where are you going?"

"Uhhhhh... To my room to do homework?"

Danny sounded annoyed, even to himself. How was he going to get away with this? He needed to go kill Tucker so he could have more power and feed his addiction. Then he got a mental face-palm. He wasn't even going to school anymore, how was it his parents hadn't been called to find out where he was? He took a moment to clear his head and then slightly waved and walked upstairs to his room. The door was closed and locked tightly.

Phantom appeared and took to the skies, his hair blowing in the wind like all people assumed a hero's hair would. He talked out loud to himself.

"They are so stupid. Can't even tell I have red eyes? Can't tell that I'm not going to school? Can't tell that it was me who killed their daughter and that I don't care? Too stupid to make sure I'm okay... This is why I need power. This is why I need those ghosts to show me what I'm really capable of."

He stopped almost dead in his tracks. The lights to Tucker's room were turned off. He looked around to see that the kitchen lights were on. Silhouettes showed his whole family sitting around a table eating dinner. They looked like they were laughing. Danny flew in closer and heard the forks colliding with the plates. His body ached to just fly in there as a surprise and to get rid of his last "partner". He forced himself to wait another minute.

Time passed so slowly that Danny couldn't fight his energy anymore. He felt the heat from his red ectoplasm run through his veins and overtake his body. It felt like he was playing a game. Destroy the enemies, get stronger. He almost laughed but instead allowed red energy to flow off his hands as he phased through the wall and into the kitchen that the Foley family sat at.

"Hey! It's that ghost kid!"

Tucker's dad yelled out to the family. He didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong with Danny. Not that anything was wrong, in his opinion, just different. Improved.

Danny looked around until he got Tucker's eyes staring back at him in fear. Tears rimmed the human's eyes.

"Danny, why are you here? Why are you turning into the thing you never wanted to be?"

Tucker stood up. His parents exchanged a nervous glance.

"Tucker, do you know this ghost?"

His mom made a careful move as she asked about Danny. He let out a small laugh, signaling that he was not in a bad mood at the moment. He was open to talking.

Tucker gave a nervous look to Danny. His hands began to shake as Danny floated above him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I know him."

Danny sneered at Tucker. He almost gave off another flow of energy to make his friend try and help him back to how he used to be.

"Well? Go on, Tuck."

He put emphasis on the name, almost just spitting it out like it was pure torture to say it.

"Tell them how you know me."

Tucker looked down at his feet, refusing to make eye contact with anyone - not his parents, and not Danny.

"I know him because... because he's my best friend. He... He's not just the ghost boy."

Tucker stopped himself. He looked to see the looks of shock and terror on his parents' faces. He saw Danny giving a grin with his bright red eyes. He took a deep breath and kept going since Danny didn't seem to mind having his secret revealed.

"Danny Phantom is also Danny Fenton. He's half ghost, half human. And... He wasn't like this until a few days ago."

Danny gave off a deep-throated laugh as Tucker tried to explain what was going on with his best friend.

"That's right, Tucker. I'm not just a ghost, I'm also a regular guy."

Danny returned himself to his human form, dark hair and his black clothing covering his body. He looked up at Tucker, but his eyes were still red, much to Tucker's disliking. He smiling broadly, a look of evil making the smile more terrifying than expected.

"I guess you could say I've had a change of heart... or maybe just a change of perspective. You, humans, feel no pain, and now I'm going to make sure you feel everything I do."

"Danny, what are you..."

"Enough! Four years of mental and physical pain, Tucker. Four. Years. You don't even know just how much I've been through. It's been four years of hiding what I do so that you can't get hurt, but now no human seems to get hurt. No matter what, I am."

Danny sighed and tried to explain better.

"Every human that gets attacked by a ghost - that I then "save" - seems perfectly fine. No harm whatsoever ends up happening to them. But then there's me. And with this responsibility comes the emotional stress and pain, I'm getting hurt all the time - coming home covered in cuts and bruises, with broken bones and a lack of time to keep my grades up."

Danny saw Tucker open his mouth but quickly shot ectoplasm over it to keep Tuck from talking.

"I'm not done."

The red in his eyes brightened.

"I have had to fail my classes, lose the chance of being able to make it to my dream college, in a career that I've been looking into since before middle school. I guess it comes down to this - you will never understand. Oh, yeah. Sam said she did. But she never will. She can't now. And neither can Jazz. And soon, neither will you. Are you getting the point here?"

Danny formed daggers with his ectoplasm to emphasize his use of point.

"You don't know what I feel, you never will know what I feel. I'm going to gain the power I now know I'm capable of having."

He laughed hysterically.

"I've been holding myself back for years now, afraid of what would become of me. Who knew it would feel so... satisfying? Who knew, it would be so much fun? Who knew it would be you to publicize my new power, my new personality. The real me."

Tucker tried to argue with Danny, but the ectoplasm gripped tighter, his muffled cries coming out as strangled groans. He felt the choaking pull as he lost the ability to breathe through his mouth, his nose barely uncovered.

Danny saw him pull his hands up and start trying to claw through the ectoplasm so he could breathe, and possibly even talk. He kept trying to pull the pulsing energy away from his face, his parents getting up and trying to help him. He felt the sticky ectoplasm become hot, burning. He yanked his hands away in pain. Danny only smiled as he saw the teen's hands blister from the energy he was giving off.

"You don't seem to understand."

Danny bound Tucker to the chair he was sitting in, but released his mouth. Red lines showed themselves from how tight the ectoplasm had been clinging to his face. Tucker took in a raspy breath and tried to free himself, unable to do so.

"What did you do to Sam and Jazz?"

Danny waved his hands and Tucker looked to his sides to see his parents paralyzed and strapped to a couple of chairs in full view of their son, their mouths blocked by red ectoplasm just as Tucker's had been. Danny gave off a dark grin.

"They're dead now. That's why they will never understand what I feel. It's your turn now."

Tucker's eyes widened as he thought through what Danny was saying.

"That's why I never got an answer from them. Why I haven't seen them!"

Danny laughed.

"You're a fool for thinking that I was incapable of doing this."

Danny pulled the ecto-energy daggers from his sides and held them out in the air, he seemed to be giving off a show.

"Now, Tucker. Your parents are going to be given a task. They will go through with it. They will do as I say. They will watch your end become real. Should they not, well, let's just say you'll be seeing them in hell."

Danny pressed one of his glowing blades to Tucker's arm, pulling slowly to listen to him scream in pain as he explained to the adults what they were supposed to do.

"You unwanted humans will be responsible for explaining my ghost half to my parents. Tell them that I was in a lab accident and that they were the ones responsible. Their portal gave me extreme pain. But it also gave me ghost powers, so thank them for that too. Thank them for my powers."

He took his other blade to the other arm on Tucker's body. He could see tears rolling down the parents' faces.

"Tell my parents that I was not the evil ghost they thought that I was at first. I was trying to be a hero and save everyone. Until now. Now I am the evil maniac of a ghost that they characterized my ghost half as. "

Tucker's screams almost drowned out the last part, but Danny knew that they could hear everything he was saying. His grin never left his face. This felt so much more natural than what he was used to doing. Danny pulled his blade to Tucker's shin.

"Tell them that it was me who killed Jazz. That it was me who killed Sam. Tell them that it was me who killed Tucker."

He moved the next shin.

"Tell them that I am now killing my human half. That I will be more than half ghost for the rest of eternity."

He stopped for a moment and paused, letting Tucker's screams of agony sink into his parents' minds. He let tears stream down their cheeks, let their sobs be muffled by his red, ectoplasmic energy. He lifted his blade to Tucker's shoulder blade and started making a thin line on the sensitive nerves.

"Finally, tell them that they can come to hunt me, I'm not stopping them, but they will never win. I am not afraid to hurt, I am not afraid to injure, I am not afraid to use all of my power on them. I am not afraid to kill."

Danny's voice dropped to what sounded like a deeper, evil tone for his last request. As he finished cutting Tucker's collar bone, he poured more energy into the kid to keep him alive to feel the pain. He ripped Tucker's chest open and pulled out his heart, cutting the arteries holding it to his body with a quick slice from his blade. He held the heart and watched the blood pour down his arm, down Tucker's chest, and onto the floor.

He pulled the ventricles away from the atria and left each one separate from each other, each resting in one of the cuts Danny produced while he was telling Tucker's family what to do.

He saw Tucker trying not to scream in terror - to show his parents how brave he was - but Danny forced him to scream as he put pressure on the diaphragm. He burnt through the clothing and skin in the abdominal area and dissolved the muscles in the way of every other organ with his power. He then pulled Tucker's stomach from his midsection and began to puncture it, letting the acid flow onto the floor for a moment before forcing Tucker to swallow his own stomach acid.

The acidity of the fluid began to eat away at the floor and break down the inner lining of the esophagus. Tucker's other organs then had the acid rain on them, destroy them, melt them. He cried out in agony and Danny heard his mom begin to try and scream. He turned to her while Tucker was being destroyed by his own body.

"Silence, Woman!"

He threw a violent wave of energy at her that knocked back a bit, leaving a large mark on her neck and arms where it hit her. She forced herself to be quiet, tears unstoppably flowing onto the collar of her dress. Tucker's father gave Danny a dirty look after he turned back to Tuck. How dare this teenager hurt his wife.

Danny knew he was getting dirty looks. Without even turning around he sent a dagger flying towards Tucker's dad, his aim having it land and settle itself perfectly in the left shoulder. It caused blistering to appear around the blade.

"I will finish this with you both in silence, both of you only watching. You will feel pain like I have for years."

He returned to Tucker.

"Where was I?"

Tucker's eyes widened in fear, his voice incapable of making any noise now that his stomach acid had burned through his throat. With his eyes filled with murder, Danny began to take Tucker's kidneys and eyes. He placed the kidneys where the eyes should have been, the eyes being set in his lap. Danny laughed and started cutting away layers of muscle.

He pressed energy into every rib until it snapped, hearing Tucker's vocal folds trying to make noise but failing with how destroyed they were. Danny laughed again, his eyes glowing a brighter color. He began to remove one of Tucker's legs, dislocating the other and one shoulder.

He sliced into the spinal cord to paralyze the lower half of the body. Tucker's upper half jerked in what Danny assumed was a response to the pain. He slit the dangling wrists and let the blood drip down the sides of the chair and onto the floor. Then he smiled deeply.

"Time for my favorite part."

Danny pressed his hand against Tucker's skull - leaving the beret on his head. He pressed energy into his hand, flowing it through until he heard a pop, and pieces of the fragmented skull flew everywhere, in every direction. He looked into the cavity holding the brain, watching Tucker's body begin to go limp from lack of energy. He quickly restored that, the body still jerking randomly from the pain it was in. Then Danny began to poke and prod at the brain laying inside what was left of the skull.

Tucker's mom let out another cry, and Danny responded with a scowl - throwing a knife into her thigh to shut her up.

Danny quickly looked back to what he had been doing and thought about what he had done to the other two brains he had messed with that week.

"Let's see here... what do I want to do this time?"

He poked around some more, making sure to see Tucker's family crying violently and in fear of him. He pulled out a midsection to the temporal lobe.

"I hear this is the part of the brain that controls memory. Let's see how long you remember this."

He took that section of the brain and began to pour hot energy into it. It began to dry out, becoming hard and lightweight. He laughed as he began to crush the missing portion of the brain into dust, scattering it on the floor between Tucker and his parents.

The amount the parents tried to move was torture since they had ectoplasmic-energy paralyzing them. They wanted to scream in agony, emotionally and physically, but were afraid afraid Danny would torture them as well. They listened to him laugh and were unable to stop the salty water falling from their eyes.

Danny put his hand into Tucker's skull again, adjusting the kidneys in the eye sockets. He then took the rest of the brain and turned it to a puddle on the floor, just as he had done with Sam's. The parents nearly passed out. It looked like the dad was gagging pretty hard at seeing his son's brain like this.

Danny decided that this would be enough to get the adults to do as he said and tell his parents what he wanted. Plus, there wasn't much left to Tucker that could be destroyed. He sighed, disappointed that this kill was almost over. He quietly stopped letting his energy keep Tucker living, and yanked both lungs out of his chest, placing them in the skull and letting Tucker stop breathing.

"He is completely dead. You have a week to do as I requested, or you'll have the same thing done to you next."

Danny laughed as he intangibly flew out of the house, his mind racing, knowing he was high from killing Tucker. He looked around and almost expected to see the darkly cloaked ghosts floating around him. He knew that his energy would wear off Tucker's parents after a few minutes, but they wouldn't talk to his parents until at least tomorrow. He floated back to his house and silently and invisibly entered his room.

He sighed and slowly closed his eyes as he returned to his human form as he laid down on his bed. He listened closely to hear his parents talking on the phone, it sounded like they were just now reporting his sister's murder. It was almost a quarter past eight at night, they must have been too upset to call her in earlier. Danny just shrugged. He quit trying to hear what was being said and instead decided to try to rest. He could only smile when he heard someone talking to him.

"You have completed the task."

"You are successful."

"You are even more powerful."

"You are going beyond what we thought you were capable of."

"You are king."

Danny listened, wondering what he was to do next. He knew he would see the cloaked ghosts the next day, but he wanted to know what it was that was going to make him such a great, powerful king. His question went unanswered. He stood up to change clothes so that he could relax for the evening. As he sat himself down on his bed and leaned back on his headboard, he felt a soft breeze blow his face. He felt a slender, bony hand grab his shoulder. But there was nothing there. He looked around and saw nobody, nothing around him but himself.

Danny laid himself on his back, his mind rushing at a speed he didn't know it could as he thought over what he had done the past few days. He admitted to himself that this was really him - this is who he was supposed to be. This person has been inside him this whole time. He felt no guilt for what he had done to his no-longer friends and family.

As he closed his eyes to try and get some rest to prepare for the next day, he heard one more sentence from the ghosts, this one answering his questions to why he was going to be such a mighty ghost king.

"You have embraced the enemy within."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! The third chapter is done! This story has been so much fun to write, and it's really been super fun trying to show more emotion to the characters and actually follow through with what one character says they're gonna do. I really hope that this story is enjoyable and that I can keep this story flowing for a while. I've got a bunch of free time right now for my writing, so I will definitely be brainstorming a lot more than usual. As usual, feel free to comment, request, and enjoy!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	4. Puissant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! So, I'm not trying to cause confusion, but at the beginning of chapters, I have started adding little snippets of the story - or even just little extras - but from another person's POV. I've had a lot of fun playing with some of those ideas so I decided to add them since it gave a bit more depth and a few more details that you can't get from the main portions of the story. This has definitely been my favorite story to write so far. I hope you are still enjoying, and since I've got a ton of free time now, it's gonna be updated a lot more. Requests, comments, and criticism are always welcome!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

The Mansons were always busy. Always in a rush. Always trying to make more money - even though they were already beyond rich. Pamela knew that her daughter wasn't proud of being so rich, but refused to let them enter a state of money loss. She and her husband each worked well-paying jobs, and it always helped to have the money coming in from a family member creating the device to spin cellophane onto deli toothpicks.

She looked around the house but found Samantha nowhere in sight. In frustration, she began calling her daughter's nickname - Sammykins.

Pamela got no response for several minutes and began to call her husband since he had already left for work. She pulled her bedazzled phone from the counter and dialed a number she had memorized at this point. Her husband picked up, a cheery voice on the other end making Pamela feel happy.

"Hey sweetie, what's up?"

"Oh, I can't find Sammykins anywhere! Do you know where she is?"

"Hmm. Last I knew she was hanging out with that Fenton kid that is always messing with how she acts. He's such a bad influence."

Pamela nodded slightly while she listened to her husband.

"Yes, I suppose that's probably right. Come home and we will look at the video cameras from that part of town. She has to be there somewhere. She's going to be late for school!"

Pamela got an okay from her husband and saw on her tracking system that he was on his way home to help her look for their daughter. She couldn't be too far, after all - Sam couldn't drive. Her family was so rich, why mess with driving when you can just hire a chauffeur or a private jet? Pamela never drove anywhere because of this, and her husband was in a limousine right now.

Pamela wandered the halls of the house until she got to the computer room and waited for her lover to get home. Thankfully he didn't work too far away and was home within half an hour. They stared at the computer screens for a significant amount of time until they saw just what they were looking for - Sam.

They saw her walking home in the hours just before it was night - pushing her curfew like always - but thankfully in the safer part of town. She seemed to be fine until a figure in dark clothing, apparently almost all black, appeared out of what seemed like nowhere. Pamela almost had to hide her eyes and avoid watching what the figure did, but she had to know who it was. She watched as the figure began to destroy and torture her daughter, using internal organs as weapons and making sure nobody would be able to recognize Sam. Pamela forced herself to keep watching to try and get an identity.

It was when the camera zoomed in that she saw who it was. The face that turned around was so obvious to her. She had seen this person all over the news. It was a young-ish looking teen, his skin so pale it looked like he could have been dead. Bright green from his eyes reflected onto the platinum white, mess of hair on his head. The suit was familiar as well - all black except for a few simple accents.

"It's that ghost kid that haunts our town."

She whispered to her husband as the camera cut out for time. She looked up to see him standing over her with tears running down his face.

"That ghost just killed our daughter. Our beloved daughter. For no reason, no reason whatsoever."

"We have to tell somebody."

"Who? Nobody in this town knows how to get rid of ghosts. Especially not that one!"

Pamela sighed deeply. Her heart sank as she realized what they would have to do to avenge their daughter's murder.

"There is one family we could try telling... The one family in this town that knows anything about ghosts."

Her husband looked down at her. His face quickly filled with disgust as she mentioned the people that they were always going against, no matter what it was for.

"You don't mean the Fentons, do you?"

"Who else could I mean?"

"Why would we ask them for help? They aren't exactly geniuses if you get what I'm saying."

"Yes, I know. Their son is a horrible influence as well. But what choice do we have? Our daughter - our only child - was killed by a ghost. Nobody else in town could even attempt to catch, destroy, get rid of - whatever, a ghost like they could."

"Are you sure this is the right idea?"

"To avenge Sam? Yes. It's what she would have wanted us to do for her."

Pamela saw her husband look her in the eyes with an odd look of fear mixed with confidence. She almost wanted to laugh and pretend all of this was a dream, use her husband's goofy looking face to distract herself from the pain of losing her daughter at such a young age, with so much left to do in life.

"Then it's settled. We will go tell the Fentons about what happened as soon as I am decent looking."

Pamela stood up and walked out of the room to go get ready to tell her least favorite people on Earth about what happened to their daughter. Her body wanted to collapse in tears in the hallway. But anyone with the Manson name didn't cry like that. She had to be strong. She had to be confident. She had to always look perfect.

She had to avenge her daughter.

. . .

Danny found himself floating in a dream. His body felt weightless, even more so than floating when he was in his ghost form. He looked around to see nothing but darkness. The dream was familiar, but now it was just a dream and not a nightmare. He watched the events play out.

Danny saw himself pull a set of green blades from thin air, obvious to him to be made out of ectoplasm. He saw himself destroying any ghost that came at him in no time. Skulker, Ember, Technus, The Box Ghost - several times was it the Box Ghost - Kitty, Walker. The list went on and on. Yet every single one was destroyed.

Danny watched himself sever several ghost heads, puncture each body with enough energy to destabilize and melt the ghosts. He saw gooey ectoplasmic residue all around him. Just, floating. Danny kept watching, a smile wanting to break across his face as his mind saw what was going on.

More ghosts came at him - only he didn't know these ghosts, had never fought them before. He saw himself getting ready to fight, his blades being lifted into the air to protect himself. He didn't see his parents coming to hunt the ghosts that were after him. He watched intently as Jack and Maddie flew into battle, and since the dream-created Danny hadn't been paying attention, he didn't see when he sliced through his parents just the same as the ghosts until it was too late.

The gut-wrenching emotion he felt the first several times he was in the dream wasn't there. Rather than being destroyed within himself that his parents were now gone, all thanks to him and his ghost powers, he felt himself on his way to that high feeling he now got whenever he killed a human. He heard himself breathing deeply and wanting to do it in person. His mind drifted to the memories of the three he had already eliminated.

Danny's dream began to morph away from what he had called a nightmare for almost four years. His newest three memories began to satisfy him as the dream he was having was just watching everything that he had done to who had called his friends and his sister. Danny watched repeatedly as he tied down Tucker's family and told them what to do if they wanted to live. This got him to thinking about what was going to be happening when he was awake.

His parents were going to find out about him being a half-ghost murderer eventually. It was best to just hope that it was today that Tucker's parents came to talk to his because they were afraid of him. If Danny remembered correctly, nobody could fear the innocent look on Fenton's face. But if you saw Phantom - especially now - it was hard not to fear. This made him smile.

His memories continued to play in the dream, each one making him a bit more locked into his high feeling while he killed. He listened to his own voice fluctuate between what everybody knew and what Danny was starting to take on with the inner evil. His thoughts were trying to decide what he was going to do later, but he got no ideas while watching himself, while still sleeping, while his brain was still turned off.

Danny heard a loud thud outside his dream and quietly willed his mind not to wake up. He wasn't in the mood to deal with anything at the moment.

The thud began repeating itself.

"Is somebody knocking on my door?"

The memories began to blur, their edges fuzzy and hard to see. Danny gave a sigh and realized that his body was waking up. He slowly rolled over in his bed, hearing knocking on his door. He listened to his dad calling his name repeatedly to try and get the door to open.

Danny yelled back at his dad.

"Just give me a minute! I'm getting up."

Danny's stomach turned upside down. He almost wanted to hurl as he stood up nervous to see his parents. It sounded like he was going to be telling them about Phantom now, rather than later as he had planned. He had wanted a few hours to figure out what to do so that he would still be just as powerful as he knew he could be. If he was hit down without knowing about it, it could cause a small pause in his ruling.

He stared at himself in the mirror in his room. Danny smiled as he saw his eyes glowing their now natural shade of red. He figured this would be a plus on his side of things since he was just a teenager that nobody had feared until just two or three days ago. He turned himself to face the door to his room and took a deep breath to try and calm his fears of having to talk to his parents.

He heard the voices he was hoping for.

"Do not be scared."

"There is nothing to fear."

Danny took a deep breath in.

"But what if they manage to destroy me? What if I'm not powerful enough? What if something goes wrong."

Danny listened carefully to try and hear the ghosts sooner. He listened for several minutes, hearing nothing but his dad pounding on the door again. Until he heard something that was almost nothing.

"You will never be destroyed. You will always have enough power."

It paused before continuing, Danny holding his breath.

"They can hurt you, but with all of our being, we give you some of our power. You cannot get destroyed. Hurt, yes. But never will you be destroyed."

It seemed to hold back.

"The pain will be less, but it will be there. Do not believe you are unable to be hurt. You are. That is how the first king got destroyed."

Then, Danny felt himself breathing again. The ghosts had left his mind. He silently walked closer to the door, watching it shiver as his dad pounded on it. The doorknob was just a few inches from his hand. His body began to open the door, his body almost excited to see who had come to see Danny.

As the door opened, he saw Jack blocking most of the doorway. Maddie not too far behind him, and she was quickly followed by the Manson family, and behind them trailed the Foleys. Danny's eyes widened, still nobody noticing the bright red instead of blue.

His mind began to crawl instead of race. He felt himself losing his murder high. His mouth began to open in a fake shy smile but got cut off as his mom rushed him.

"Danny, did you know that Sam and Tucker were murdered too? Just like your sister?"

Danny tried to look shocked.

"Oh no! What happened? I had no idea!"

Sarcasm dripped from his voice, but he assumed that if his parents were oblivious to him skipping school, having red eyes, and being half ghost, they probably wouldn't hear the sarcasm. He watched his mom stare him down.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

He tilted his head away from her, not wanting to make eye contact unless it was absolutely necessary.

Maddie looked at Danny, her eyes not wanting to believe what she was seeing her son do. She didn't want to believe everything that the Foleys and the Mansons had said either. Her heart was torn as she tried to piece things together.

"Danny, I've been told that it was you who killed all of them. Please, tell me it's not true."

Maddie saw a smirk cross his face. Danny felt a small snap inside of himself. He couldn't go back. This was his time to shine. He let himself begin to bleed through the fake person he had created. He felt his energy flowing through his body.

"It's not true. I didn't do it."

He was trying to be careful with his words, his mom still looking at him in worry.

"Danny, don't lie to me. Did you kill Jazz, Sam, and Tucker?"

His smile widened, his eyebrows not moving to make the smile happy rather than evil.

"Technically no, but technically yes. I did, and did not, kill them."

He played on the fact that his ghost half killed them, but his human half did not. If they were saying that it was he who killed Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, then Tucker's parents must have told them about him being a ghost too.

His hand rose in front of him so he could pick at his nails, the other arm crossing over his body. He was almost replicating the villain from a movie, his face making those signature moves, his body language like a mirror to the actor. Only he wasn't acting.

Maddie looked at him again, saw him staring at his fingertips. Her voice shook so bad that nobody could understand the words coming out of her mouth. Jack walked up behind her to try and comfort her as everything happened. First, their daughter was killed, and now this?

"What do you guys know so far?"

Danny's voice had dropped a few pitches, his eyes never moving from where they were focused on his fingers. Jack took it upon himself to speak for all six of the adults, this one tiny child that they were afraid of standing before them.

"The Foleys. They said that you came and killed their son last night. That you aren't just human - you're a ghost too. They said that you threatened them. That they saw you become a ghost and then watched you torture and kill Tucker."

Jack stopped.

"We saw the ghost boy kill Sam from the security cameras in the street. If you are the ghost boy like you claim you are, then you killed our daughter."

Pamela shrieked at Danny, he wanted to just destroy her then. A voice in his mind told him to wait.

"Danny,"

Jack tried to think of what to say.

"What made you a ghost? What made you do this to your family and friends?"

Danny stood in shock. He saw his mom look him in the eyes, her body shaking as she listened. He pulsed his energy to try and show his power before he gave another evil speech. His mom saw his eyes were red instead of blue.

"So I see that these dolts told you about their child, and said that it was me. But did not explain everything I told them to. There will be punishment for this."

Danny forced his energy through his hands, daggers forming from glowing red power. His eyes narrowed on the Foleys as he took aim. Tossing the daggers lightly, they created much more damage than anyone except Danny thought they would. They landed in the midsections of Tucker's parents, one just around the belly button, the other right by the diaphragm. They gasped for air as they had the wind knocked out of them, blisters appeared around the burning hot ectoplasm.

Danny gave off an evil laugh as he saw them suffer. His mind returning to normal as he was no longer having withdrawal symptoms of his addiction.

"I told you to explain much more than that I was the one who killed your son and their daughters. I asked you to explain how I came to be, who I really am. You were responsible for explaining the lab accident. That this is not the original ghost I was, that I have killed the three kids, that I am also killing myself, that they can hunt me, but they will never win. You seemed to have missed some of that."

Danny caused his energy to allow him to change forms.

"I am the ghost boy you hate! I did kill your children! I was created by you."

He stared into his parents' eyes, his body rising upward as he showed his power.

"Your portal to the Ghost Zone gave me a bad lab accident while you weren't home. Sam and Tucker forced me to go into the portal since it didn't work, and when I did so, it turned on, blasted me with so much ecto-energy it was beyond painful. It began to merge with me, combine with my DNA. I changed into a ghost. But soon found that I was able to switch between ghost and human. I was only half ghost."

He paused and watched the adults begin to cower under him as he let his energy begin to flow off of him in red, radiating waves.

"So I decided to become a hero. A ghostly hero. Unfortunately, I had to keep my identity secret - for good reason of course. My parents were trying to kill me. My ghost half, at least."

He forced blades to appear at his sides, latching onto his belt as he waited to continue. He saw the other six beginning to shake in fear, holding onto their significant other like it was the last time they would see each other. Danny wanted it to be that way, but again, the voices told him to wait. So he did.

Instead, he continued with his speech.

"My goal was to save everyone I could. I'd rather have the evil destroyed. I didn't want to be seen as evil, but because I was a ghost, I was."

He took a deep breath and let his blades grow longer, reaching to his feet while dangling at his waist.

"And so, I just let it go. Made sure I was meeting my goal. The usual thing a hero does. But then your kids began trying to help me lose the stress from being a hero, and a student, and trying to get a job. I had to give up on my grades, on my dreams, on my life to try and be a hero like I said I would. Because I couldn't help but feel like it was my fault ghosts were roaming the town. The portal didn't work until I got my powers."

Danny froze, he saw his parents standing up. Their arms at the ready to grab a weapon.

"When your children decided that they would know exactly what I was feeling, I began to lose it. They will never know what I felt while stressing about being a hero. They didn't have the guilt I had when I couldn't save somebody, when I failed a test, when I had to lie to everyone I knew. I was a freak, too."

Danny saw his friends' parents beginning to back up. Anger grew in his chest and he flung a wall of energy behind them, preventing anyone from leaving. He heard the voices of the cloaked ghosts tell him to calm down and wait. So he did.

"Then, of course, there was the physical pain. Uncountable broken bones. Burns, cuts, bruises, sprained joints, dislocated joints, torn muscles, and black eyes. I came home saying it was nothing. That Dash had punched me again, that I fell on the way to school, that I had been hit by a kid on a bike... I had so many excuses, I was running out. Thankfully my ghost half helps me to heal faster than a human and I've only been to the hospital once for my injuries. But that's not an excuse."

"Danny, what do you mean? What does this have to do with killing your friends and sister?"

Maddie sounded scared, which only made Danny smile more.

"You see, they said that they understood my pain. They didn't, they don't, they never will. My god, it seems that every human is now impossible to hurt. It's like they can't get hurt by anything. No matter who I saved, or from what, they always came out unscathed. Not the tiniest scratch on them."

"We created that. It's a supplement that doctors prescribe now... it protects humans from ghosts. Only people over twenty-one can use it though."

Danny stared at his mom in shock as she blurted out that there was now a way that humans were protected from ghosts.

"What's it made from?"

Maddie refused to talk for a moment. When Danny pressed a blade to her throat she decided it was a good idea to speak.

"Its a mix of natural supplements with an anti-ghost protectant known as Blood Blossoms infused. It's got Fentonyl in it too, a new pain medication we created from chemicals in the lab that not only prevents and/or rids pain, but it prevents injuries, too."

She fell to the floor as Danny threw her to the side and growled, his boots walking on the ceiling in pure anger.

"And yet, even with your specialized protection pills, you humans still used me as a protector in the city. You still used me."

Anger grew in his voice as he gained more power from his pure rage. He felt his blood boiling as he spoke.

"You have been using me for too long now. I'm done protecting those who don't need protecting. You're using me and causing my mental and physical pain. I've had it. And your kids started it. Use them to show Amity Park what I'm capable of. Let them know that I am killing Danny Fenton internally. Phantom is getting stronger. I am getting stronger. I'll be more ghost than human and more powerful than you have ever seen."

Danny's vision rimmed with red as he raged to the adults, his parents looking up at him with guns blazing. He batted them away from him with one sword from his belt, his body almost bored by how little he was doing. He forced himself to try and calm down, but the red around his vision increased with each passing second.

"I guess the only thing missing is that I told the Foleys to report to you, that I will attack, hurt, injury, and/or kill you should you come hunting me. Is that clear?"

Energy beamed from Danny's hands as he made his point. His parents looked to him with their arms lowering. They exchanged a look of fear as Danny began to grin at what he felt was a success.

"Good. Now then, I have two worlds to rule."

Danny began to go back to his room to pack his things, his mind wandering from what the ghosts were going to say, to how much he loved his power, to how jealous the other ghosts would be when they found that he was the Ghost King now. He looked up but not behind him as he heard his family come into his room, the other two sets of parents standing in the hall and listening to what was being said.

"Danny?"

Red eyes turned to stare back at his mom as his name was stated. His mind began to wander from what she was trying to say, his hands returning to packing his things as his mom tried to stutter an answer.

“I… you… there’s no way… you’re not… too young…”

Danny cut her off with one hand raised in the air, red smoke dancing upward and out the window. His face held no emotion as he answered her.

“I am leaving. I am a ghost. You can’t do anything about it, and I’m not too young. Just because I won’t be 18 for a few more months doesn’t mean a thing. I’m half dead. I’m all powerful. I’m going to destroy you, so you can join your daughter in the dark pits of hell if you try to stop me.”

His eyes flashed a brighter shade of red, what looked like flames licking at his pupils from his irises. Maddie took a shocked step back.

“Don’t believe me? Ask the Foleys. I’m pretty good at being violent when I want to.”

He skimmed on the fact that he was addicted. His hands had begun to shake, his mind filling with fog because of his withdrawal. His mom heard him whisper to himself, fearful of what might become of him if he let himself go, let himself either kill everybody and have nothing left to rule, or if he would wither away from withdrawal if he didn’t kill anybody.

“What did you say, ghost scum?”

Danny lowered the hands he had been staring at and looked blankly at his mother. He repeated himself with a bland voice that gave no emotion.

“I need to kill.”

His eyes were sunken into their sockets. His brain screaming for him to kill his mother. Danny felt his eyes narrow as his vision began to go red. Maddie took a few steps back, afraid of what he was going to do.

Danny took a few steps forward to keep the distance between them the same, all of his mind focused on stopping himself from killing another person before they could make it public that he was going to do anything it took to be the most powerful being anyone had ever known.

He saw the fear in her eyes, which only fed his want to kill. Danny looked down at his hands to see them shaking, trembling - violently - from how badly he wanted to use them. His blood was boiling.

A voice whispered in his mind, causing him to snap out of it and return to just being Danny for a moment.

“Not yet. Soon, but not yet.”

“Let these pathetic humans share what you have done - what you will do. After that, they are at your mercy.”

“Death shall be their punishment for the pain they gave you. Not only today but for the past four years.”

Danny's grin appeared again, he found himself able to return to packing. He grabbed what was left of his stuff and shoved it into a bag, thankfully he didn’t have too much. He forced energy through it to make it smaller, forcing his ectoplasm to keep it at a size where he could put it in his pocket until he found a new place to be staying.

Without another thought he had taken to the skies once more, searching for where he would be half-living until he was truly the ghost king. He saw a few humans walking below him and begged himself not to kill, his mind cloudy and tired, his willpower to control himself running out.

Danny landed in front of a torn down building that was barely able to stand. He threw his suitcase on the floor inside the front door and let it return to its normal size. His body wanted to collapse, but he forced himself to float into what looked to be a bedroom. The lights didn’t work, but Danny didn’t care. His ghostly form lit the room up on its own.

He sat against the wall and almost passed out. But he heard voices.

“You will sleep well.”

“The ability to properly rule requires rest.”

“We have found a way to help you with what you call an… addiction.”

“You will be able to think on your own tomorrow. Let us work our power and energy to help you, and you will rule.”

Danny smiled slightly, his head beginning to hurt as he looked around.

“Wherever you guys are, thank you. I know I’m supposed to be evil now, but I cannot thank you enough for your help. You finally found the real me - a version of me I am happy and comfortable in.”

He paused to think, before offering them a position that he knew he would need to fill.

“How would you guys like to be my council?”

Before Danny heard any reply, his head had fallen back and his eyes had closed tightly, his body had relaxed, the muscles that had been so tight you could see them under his jumpsuit releasing. His energy was drained, his body slowly returning to what he had left of his human portion left in him.

He was basically passed out as he leaned on the wall. His brain was still on, however, providing the healing he needed.

. . . 

Danny was floating again. His body was almost weightless. The dream had returned to him, or so he thought. He looked around but saw nobody else.

“Where’s the fake me?”

He tried to see if he was just too early to see himself. As he looked around, the cloaked ghosts appeared from nowhere, their forms materializing from thin air.

“This is your cure. You will be able to re-enact your memories of killing those three humans, as many times as you want. Until you no longer feel the need to kill.”

Danny looked around at them all. He stood in shock.

“But if it’s an addiction, won’t that just make me need to kill more in order to get that feeling that I enjoy having?”

He looked confused and heard a small laugh in his head from the ghosts.

“Foolish child… this is not just an addiction. It is a ghost addiction. There are two ways to deal with it. Either face the human way of being repaired and suffer the side effects of withdrawal. Or, you can use the ghostly method and make yourself bored with it. Repeat the three killings you’ve done until your body is tired of killing and can focus on something else, like properly ruling with high power.”

Danny thought for a moment.

“Then what about when I go to kill more people in Amity Park? Will I still be bored doing it?”

The ghosts motioned for Danny to follow them as they floated towards a deeply colored door that had appeared out of nowhere, the same way they had. The deep midnight blue made Danny feel like it was going anywhere but the Ghost Zone since that seemed to revolve around purple and green. He followed in their pure silence until it drove him crazy.

“Are you going to answer me?”

Danny saw them open the door, he saw his human self before the changes he had gone through. He saw innocence, light, and fear. He saw the shy, dorky kid he had grown up as, and his body almost wanted to hurl at the sight of it.

“Why are you showing me this?”

The ghosts looked at each other for a moment before closing the door and returning to Danny.

“Time can do many things to you."

He looked to the ghosts, trying to figure out what they were trying to say to him.

"This version of you from so long ago. It never had this new version of you growing within it. Over time, as you got fed up with how you were going about your days being hurt, this version of you came to be."

The ghosts returned Danny to where his memories were waiting on him. Waiting for him to go on a killing spree.

"With you repeatedly killing these three children in these memories, in a fake dream, your brain will be trained to live without having to murder somebody all the time. Your brain will begin to think of it as something that you need to do for power, not because you're addicted. The energy and joy you experience while killing will remain the same, but your purpose behind doing so won't be that you need to kill to keep going on with your normal afterlife."

The ghosts lifted their arms and fell to their knees, their bodies folding in half and bowing before Danny, his head spinning as he heard what they said.

"You will be killing people to show your true power."

Danny smiled and looked at the memories behind him. His own thoughts screamed to murder the three over and over. He needed to get that high feeling again. He needed to be happy again. He needed to kill.

"Thank you guys again. And seriously, think over my offer. If I am to be king, then I'll need a council to help me make decisions in my ruling. Now, do I get to choose who I kill again first?"

A slight nod answered his question, and Danny formed his now usual blades at his sides. The memories contained in floating bubbles were just behind him, and as he approached, he could hear the humans doing everything they would have done normally, leading up to when they were killed.

"This is gonna be fun."

Danny turned his head to see that the cloaked ghosts were gone. His smile faltered for a moment before he turned back to his memories. He silently ran through his head of which memory he wanted to start in, and a few moments later decided to start where all of his problems had begun.

He charged towards the memory of Sam, his mind racing and his energy pouring from his body as he looked to see exactly where in the memory he was. He saw Sam walking down the street and felt himself lose his mind, his body raging, wanting to let out years of emotion in a place where he couldn't be blamed for it.

"Maybe this could be emotional therapy, too. Not just trying to break my addiction."

Danny looked to see himself pulling a blade out and kicking Sam into the alleyway, not paying any attention to what he was doing, it felt like it was instinct, like it was reflex, like it was natural. He wasn't thinking about how to kill her, how to torture her. He was only thinking his usual thoughts - like how this would be helping him to rule better.

Danny felt his body find a rhythm to move to, his faint heartbeat giving him a beat. He didn't feel the need to breathe heavily if he did it like this. Not only was this helping him emotionally and working as addiction rehab, but it was also teaching him how to kill better. His mouth only grinned more as he continued, Sam's body lying dead in front of him. He felt a pull towards the next memory as this one began to rewind so he could go through with it again.

Danny's vision turned completely red, and he lost all control of his body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah... left the chapter ending in the middle of Danny's dream. Not my best idea, but it was the only "not-awkward-or-in-the-middle-of-a-really-important-part-where-I-would-forget-what-I-was-typing" place I could really see to end the chapter. Unless I wanted to be trying to rush trying to get him to wake up in the next chapter - which I feel wouldn't have been very good. So yeah, might be a cliffhanger, maybe not, but every good book I've read has had several of those... So it's okay. I'm also not that great at writing and deciding on a reasonable place to stop. All of my English teachers ever could justify that.  
> I also made a play on the medication name - gotta put that Fenton joke in there somewhere! So just like they did with the Pepto-Bismol in that one episode, I did it with Fentanyl. Did you catch that joke?  
> Yeah, I'm finally gonna be able to type a lot more, so if you found this as a cliffhanger... it probably won't be for long. I'm planning on doing a lot of work with this story and since I have so much free time it ought to be the only thing I do for a while. So, unless something comes up, I plan on having a chapter up every couple of days. And even though I have no idea how long I'm going to make this story, it'll be done before you know it since now I can type this instead of worrying about my grades and only thinking the story to myself.  
> Sorry for my overly long notes, and please, enjoy.
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	5. Dominant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes! Chapter five is finally done! This was a really hard one to decide where to end. I felt bad making this one shorter, but then I remembered that I'll have longer chapters later to make up for it. I'll add more at the end so I don't cause any spoilers - if I cause any spoilers - so please, always enjoy reading, no matter what you read!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Maddie watched as Pamela pulled up the video camera from the night that Danny Phantom killed Sam. She watched as the ghost flew in as Sam walked down the street. She forced herself to watch as she was tortured by someone she had called a friend since she was little. She watched her own son destroy the body to prevent recognition. Maddie watched as Sam's corpse lay motionless in the alley, waiting to be discovered.

Her hands began to slowly escalate to her jawline, her eyes refusing not to let salty fluids flow down her cheeks. Her mind was racing, thoughts swimming through her head with nowhere for them to end up - no answers to her questions.

Pamela stared back at her pupils, Maddie almost wanting to clobber her in a bear-hug.

"Do you see what your son did? Do you understand now?"

Maddie looked at her in silence for a moment before answering.

"I do."

Pamela sneered.

"Do you know what this means?"

Maddie was taken aback by the rude action. Why was she supposed to know everything? She already knew that the Mansons hated her like there was no tomorrow. Her eyes flicked from the screen to Pamela and back again.

"I don't know if we're on the same page..."

"Your "son" needs to go. Kill him, destroy him, torture him like he did my daughter. I don't care. But you will avenge my beloved child."

Maddie's thoughts raced around the inner portion of her skull. Her head throbbed violently as she realized what was being stated.

"But he's my son."

Pamela snorted in reaction to the comment Maddie gave.

"He's a monster who killed my daughter. You can get rid of him."

Then she sneered and stuck her nose in the air.

"It will be better for all of us if he's gone."

Maddie felt her face begin to heat with anger, her blood pressure rising. She clenched her hands at her sides and tried not to use them to strangle Pamela.

"What would you do if I told you the same thing about your daughter?"

"My daughter is already dead!"

Maddie saw the tears forming around the rims of Pamela's eyes. Her own eyes slightly grew wider and began to tear up as well.

"And it's all thanks to your son."

Maddie looked to the floor, her feet almost moving from how dizzy she was.

"Then I guess it's final. I'll make sure that Danny ends up dead, just as he left Sam in the alleyway. I'll make sure he knows what he did to you."

Maddie paused, her voice raspy as she attempted to hold back her tears.

"I'll make sure he can't hurt anyone else. I'm so sorry about our mistake..."

Maddie walked away from Pamela, her body wanting to collapse as she dragged herself home, her feet aching from the short walk. Everyone stared at her as she walked past them. The keys to her house were almost too heavy for her arm as she let herself back in. Jack sat at the kitchen table, looking at one of the ghost hunting devices they had made before Danny told them he was a ghost.

"If only we had known it was our own son... How could we have been so blind? These were always tracking Danny, always following our supposedly human son. How could we not know...?"

Jack looked up at Maddie, his eyes tinted red.

"Jack."

Maddie sat down by her husband and took his arm. He looked back at her and listened. Maddie's heart fluttered, nervous about how to tell Jack what they were supposed to do now.

"We have to get rid of him. Permanently."

"Maddie, he's our son. Why would you...?"

"Because he's a monster now, Jack! Because he's threatening and hurting innocent people!"

Maddie looked away from her husband, her eyes still filled with more tears than she knew she could hold. Her mind told her not to state her last thought, but it leaked from her mouth as she looked to a wall, Danny's drawings of rocket ships and stars, planets and astronauts taped to the paint.

"Because he was a mistake."

. . .

Danny felt himself falling bored by the memories, he felt himself losing his high feelings but never experienced the withdrawal as he had before when he wasn't killing. His mind told him that he was showing them who was in control, he even screamed it as he repeatedly killed his best friends and his sister.

He told himself that he would still be having fun, that he would be able to prove the cloaked ghosts wrong. He didn't think they would be able to break his ghostly addiction, but it turns out that he was wrong - not them. His thoughts focused on how he would be able to now focus on ruling rather than needing to kill in order to survive.

A smile crossed his face as this occurred to him. If he no longer had to worry about this problem, he would have more power. He would be seen as more powerful overall.

The daggers he had lining his belt pulsed with energy as he thought about his true amount of power.

"If I had only known I could be like this, I wouldn't have suffered for so long..."

Danny continued to kill his sister, but she seemed to hear what he had said. Her voice questioned him.

"What are you talking about?"

Danny's mind slowed for a second. If this was just a memory, then nothing should have changed. He shouldn't have gotten a response from Jazz. He paused what he was doing for a moment and stepped back, just out of the memory to see if it was a fluke. He reentered the memory, but it hadn't reset. His sister was still tied up where he had left her.

"What do you mean you suffered? You loved helping people. What's happened to you."

Danny looked at her in pure shock. Nothing his sibling said made any sense to him. Panic filled his mind as he saw that the memory was now becoming a dream. If it got much worse, it may become his new nightmare. He didn't want to be his old self anymore. He liked the Danny he had become when he found that he could cause others to feel what he felt, or at least a little bit of what he felt.

Jazz's eyes looked up to him in fear as he pulled his daggers.

"This can't become a nightmare if it doesn't go on."

He lifted the knife to her throat, her body shaking in fear as he pressed the burning ectoplasm to her neck. His hand froze for a moment as different memories of his sister flooded through his brain.

A scream of terror filled his lungs as he saw the ectoplasmic dagger flash from red to green, to a vibrant red again. He yanked on it and saw blood squirt from his sister's throat. His mind began to panic - each thought scaring him more and more.

'Without being evil, you won't have power.'

'Your human half is trying to take over and return you back to being a miserable freak.'

'Nobody will fear you if you can't even manage to kill your sister.'

Screams filled the darkness that collapsed over Danny as the memory was ruined by the nightmare. He heard whispering around him, inaudible but noticeable. The voices sounded like the cloaked ghosts, but they were nowhere to be seen. He curled his body tightly around itself and clutched his head in fear. His body violently began to shake, almost in a seizure-like movement.

Never in his life had Danny felt so scared.

So scared to lose power. So scared to fail to be a ghost. So scared to be hunted by anyone - even his family who had no real ideas of how to hunt ghosts. His body continued to spasm he laid in pure silence, waiting for the cloaked ghosts to come and save him from his fears.

His eyes filled with tears, his head beginning to throb.

"I'm better than this, so why is this so painful? What is happening to me?"

He thought to himself as he lost control of his body, his muscles continuing to tremble. He listened for his partners in crime but heard nothing for several long minutes that felt like hours.

"Why am I like this? Somebody tell me what's happening to me?!"

Danny screamed, still clutching his skull like it was going to explode if he released it. The fact that he had basically begged for an answer got him a response.

"You are learning. Your ghost half has never had the experience of doing anything without that high feeling you remember. It is part of your rehab. We never said this would be fun."

Danny listened intently, hoping to hear good news.

"With spasming muscles and hallucinations, your body is learning to adapt to what may really happen while you are not high and still killing. Your body is learning from the spasms, your mind is learning from the hallucinations. Nobody will know what you are talking about but you. Your body will not be getting "high" so to speak, but you will still feel the happiness and joy while you kill. There will be no excess ectoplasmic chemicals in the brain."

The ghosts told Danny what was happening, and while it made sense, since this was rehab, after all, Danny still felt his anger burning through him. They never told him that it would be such torture. They said he would sleep well tonight. This felt like another version of hell. It felt like he had fallen back to being used like the old version of Danny that he had been living as for four years.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

An angry voice shouted in his head, knocking the headache to another level that Danny had never thought was possible.

"YOU MUST LEARN, CHILD! YOU MUST KNOW HOW TO RULE BEFORE TRYING TO TAKE OVER. YOU MUST WORK PROPERLY, HEALTHILY, AND NOT BE OBSESSED TO BE IN POWER! IF YOU WISH TO NOT DO THIS WE CAN STRIP YOUR POWER AND TAKE AWAY YOUR CHANCES TO BE KING!"

The voice echoed through Danny's cranium as he listened, fear filling his body as he felt some force having the ability to tug at his power. He shuddered.

"No, no, thank you, but no. I can deal with this... after all, it's not permanent, right? I promise I can deal with this for a night."

Danny waited but got no response. The force pulling on his energy released and he began to gain control of his body again, except for random movements throughout his body every so often, almost like he had electrical impulses flowing through the muscles.

He stood himself upright again and released his head, his thoughts shaken and torn apart. He had no idea of how he was going to rule now since his own thoughts told him that he had been doing it wrong. He was never wrong. The ghost boy was never wrong.

Hatred for the cloaked ghosts filled his body, flames of anger burning in his eyes. The amount of work he had already put into being king could be forgotten and his power would be stripped from him in just a few seconds. All he had done was ask a question. If anything, they were the ones overreacting.

His mind had picked up its speed again. He thought back to how long it had been since he had put up with his parents hunting him, how long it had been since he enjoyed hanging out with Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, how long it had been since he won a fight without coming home injured. He thought back to when he was still happy all the time instead of feeling this raw anger flowing through him at all times.

"Danny!"

He heard his name being called from far away. He listened for a few moments to see if he would hear it again or if he was still just hallucinating.

"Danny!"

There it was again. His mind tried to recognize the voice, and it was familiar, but he didn't have a name for who was calling for him.

"Daniel James! Wake up, now!"

He whipped his head back and forth, attempting to see who was around him. He saw nobody.

"Who's there?"

Danny walked to one side, his feet getting close to touching the memory of Tucker. The voice was familiar, maybe the nightmare had gotten worse - maybe the memories were walking out to him now. Maybe they wanted revenge.

But that didn't explain that the voice was telling him to wake up. He heard a shrill scream as he listened for the voice again, this time sounding urgent.

"Daniel James. I SAID WAKE UP. NOW!"

. . .

Danny's body jerked awake violently, his mind just beginning to come to as he raised his eyelids. A blurry vision from still being asleep showed to figures in front of him, one in bright orange and the other in a deep turquoise suit.

"Wha... what's going on? Who are you guys?"

He saw movement but didn't know what happened. His vision wouldn't let him recognize anyone. He heard a woman's voice. It was the one he had been hearing in his dream. Still familiar, but the tiredness in the voice prevented him from recognizing who it was. Danny stood up, his muscles aching from his rehab in his dream.

As his vision cleared, he felt his gut wrench, his brain fully activate itself in preparation to do what he had to do.

"Jack? Maddie?"

He saw them exchange a nervous glance at each other.

"Son, you can call us mom and dad."

Jack took a few steps forward to go near Danny. He pressed himself up against the wall as hard as he could, wishing he could get away from them without having to kill them. If he could just injure them enough that they leave him be it would be fine, but he needed them to publicize the fact that he was in charge now, that the superhero ghost boy had gone bad. If they were dead, well, nobody would know about his power.

He knew he had threatened to kill them if he hunted them, but he didn't want to lose people who could actually tell that he was going to be taking over. Generally, the public listened to the Fentons. Especially when it was about ghosts. Danny stood himself up, almost afraid of why now they weren't speaking to him - except saying that they were uncomfortable being called by their first names while talking to their kid.

"What do you guys want with me?"

Danny almost heard his own voice tremble.

"Why are you here?"

Maddie sighed.

"To fix our mistake."

Danny heard his heartbeat begin to pound at a lightning fast speed. His nerves began to tingle, and he felt himself breathe heavier. His mom looked at him and saw the effects. His heart was pounding so fast that you could see his chest moving under his shirt.

Danny quickly changed himself to his ghost form, thinking that it would get rid of the heartbeat like it always did, but it only made it look worse. His heart kept up the fast, violent pounding. It was much easier to see with his skintight suit on. Maddie watched as his eyes filled with fear when his human characteristics didn't disappear.

"Jack, check his vitals"

Danny saw whom he had called his dad pull out a small scanner to use. He ran it up and down Danny as the ghost boy was frozen in fear. A bright beam of green light covered his body as he floated there, unable to move. His fear-filled eyes stared back at the two ghost hunters.

Danny lifted his hands up to look at them, saw them quivering in front of him. He felt his breath become ice cold as his ghost began to dominate over his human half. He looked over and saw the two Fentons staring at the screen on the scanner Jack had used. They must have gotten results.

He floated himself over to see the screen, lowering his hands to his sides. He felt his mom jump when she felt his cold aura near her.

"So... what do all these numbers mean?"

Danny sounded bored. Had his fear knocked his anger down enough to let him speak reasonably?

"These are your vitals. Your heart rate, your breathing, your chemical makeup. Everything we need to know to destroy you without any chances of you coming back or just being all ghost."

Maddie held a gun in her hand, and Danny saw that she was almost afraid to use it, but was going to either way. The burning anger in his body returned as he realized what she was saying.

"So you're telling me that you're going to kill your own son? Isn't that murder?"

A look of shock covered Maddie's face as Jack wrote down the stats.

"Wasn't it murder when you killed your sister and two best friends?"

Danny gave her a smug look, his body still trembling as he tried not to lose control of his body. He leaned back in the air and crossed his arms.

"Maybe, but I'm an evil ghost - not a simple, goody-two-shoes family. Never forget that."

The red burning in his eyes flashed brightly, illuminating the area around Maddie and Jack. As Danny turned himself around to grab his belongings he heard Jack mumble that something was wrong.

"Maddie, these stats. They're unstable."

Maddie dashed over to look at the data Jack had. She checked it once, then again, and triple checked it to make sure it was correct.

"His brain chemicals are uneven. The ghostly, ectoplasmic ones are off the charts. It's like he's addicted something. These chemicals keep ranging from so far below regular that it looks like it could be withdrawal, to so high above healthy that it looks like he's high."

Danny felt himself freeze. His body still trembled as he turned himself to look at his parents. Fear filled his mind but he caused his anger and want to kill them fill his voice.

"What did you just say?"

Danny's words scared Jack, he had jumped slightly as Maddie turned to look at her so-called son. They looked at each other intensely for what felt like several minutes but was only a few seconds. Danny had to repeat himself to get an answer from Maddie.

"What did you say?"

Anger deepened his voice as he tried to get his mom to tell him what was going on. She only asked questions in response.

"Are you high? Do you have any addictions?"

Danny flinched as she asked her last question, the topic hitting close to home since his addiction was only getting in the way of his power and reign. He needed it gone, and thought it was. But if the chemicals were still there, then the cloaked ghosts were wrong about training his brain not to release chemicals.

"I did... but what would you know. I'm not addicted anymore."

Danny's body was still shaking. He felt blades form in his hands, the handles matching his grip perfectly. He shifted his fingers naturally, not even realizing he was doing it. He only knew that the cloaked ghosts had failed and he was still addicted to killing when he felt his urges like he had while murdering Tucker, threatening Tuck's parents, or using knives to make his parents talk.

He saw his mom holding her gun to his chest, a nervous sweat breaking on her forehead and running down the back of her neck as she aimed at Danny's logo.

"Put down the gun."

Danny gave her a deep stare, his voice not faltering as he felt himself losing control of his body as his addiction took over. His left hand flung the dagger it was holding, the blade landing in Jack's chest, just millimeters from his heart. Danny saw the blisters from the heat forming under Jack's jumpsuit.

He began to claw at the area around the knife, ripping away the cloths, revealing the bloody, blistered mess that had been healthy skin just moments before. Danny released a laugh as he felt himself returning to his normal character, losing the withdrawal shaking and need to injure and murder.

Urges to continue hurting - maybe even to kill - pressed Danny into forming another knife and throwing it to stab Jack in the side, between two ribs, just nicking his right lung.

Maddie dropped her ecto-blaster as she heard her husband scream in extreme pain. He collapsed to his knees, his hands ready to yank the blades Danny had thrown out of his upper body. Danny gave them an evil laugh, almost never before heard. He floated closer to his parents and whispered into Maddie's ear.

"I told you, that if you came hunting me, I would not be afraid to hurt, to injure, to kill."

Tears fell from Maddie's eyes as she watched Jack suffer.

"You were a mistake."

She whispered back to Danny, but only received a sly smile. His teeth only barely showing as he grinned at Maddie. She looked back to Jack as she heard an answer she would never forget.

"And I like it this way."

Fear crept through Maddie's spine as she listened to her son's voice tell her that he liked being evil. If she recalled, he had said that he hadn't always been like this, he had been trying to protect the people of the city and be a hero. That sounded more like her Danny - being a hero that is. He wouldn't have hurt anything, but now... now he was killing to satisfy himself.

Jack's breathing was uneven now, and Danny was almost glad. He saw his mom crying and holding him close. His own breathing became heavy and almost labored from trying to keep himself from killing. He felt his heart skip a beat as he came up with an idea.

Danny quickly forced his energy into his suitcase, shrinking it down to fit in his belt before looking around and finding his mom trying to drag his dad away from Danny. A laugh escaped his mouth as he saw the pathetic effort.

"Don't waste your time, Maddie."

Danny swooped in and grabbed Jack, slinging him over his shoulder, being careful not to touch the knives and worsen any injuries he had. Danny didn't need him bleeding out, or he wouldn't get the chance to go through with his plan or get high off of the torture and murder. He grabbed Maddie from the floor, her fists pounding on his back, her feet kicking as hard as they could, yet still not able to reach Danny's chest as he made it intangible.

Danny only smirked as he took to the skies for the first time that day. His energy left a bright red trail following behind him as he raced himself to the Fenton house. He threw his mom to the floor as he let energy surge right below him while he was just a few feet from the ground. Jack was placed in a chair as Maddie forced herself to get up after being slammed to the ground as hard as she had ever been.

Maddie's knees and left side were beginning to bruise extremely quickly as Danny continued to adjust his dad, his body having to sit in a specific position to avoid making his injuries worse. He grunted as Danny moved him and made sure he could see his deep red eyes.

"You two were stupid to come after me, especially since you had been told that I wasn't afraid of you and would be able to hurt and kill you."

A sneer crossed Danny's face as his mom finally got to her feet and ran to Jack, making sure he was alright and blocking him from Danny. He watched Maddie as she tried to put Jack in more comfort as Danny forced his energy to form more perfect-fitting blades in his hands. The red pulsed around his body as he floated around the kitchen, observing what happened.

Danny felt himself gag as his mom began to baby Jack and make sure he was okay. He watched as she kissed his forehead and Danny just about turned to the side to hurl. He had to turn himself to keep from seeing Jack place his hand on Maddie's cheek and tell her that he was alright. Danny'd had enough.

"Pathetic. You are just pathetic."

Maddie turned with fear to see Danny coming close to Jack - almost close enough to cut him with the short bladed daggers.

"I've never cared for the mushy-lovey-dovey stuff like you both have for years. I never understood why you considered love to be hunting ghosts and hurting innocent ghosts. You never hunted the correct ones."

Danny laughed almost hysterically.

"Not to mention that you never found that it was your own son you were hunting. I guess it's pretty accurate when they say that you were blissful and blind."

He lifted his knife to Jack's neck, pushing Maddie to the side, landing her back on her bruises as he floated behind his dad to threaten his life.

"You never noticed that your own son was hurt, that the name was only slightly different phonetically. I always came home late, and always right after the report of the ghost boy fighting a ghost, you knew I was smart enough to get better grades but didn't seem to notice when I dropped to being a C student rather than the A's and B's I got the years before."

Maddie tried to defend herself. She was being called a bad mother, but she knew that it wasn't true.

"We just thought it was high school! The way you need to study differently in high school than in middle school! And there was no way our son could have been a ghost, humans and ghosts can't mix."

Danny laughed.

"I never studied in middle school. Everything we were taught came naturally to me. I had to stop being in school 24/7 like I used to be, had to stop doing homework while in a free class, had to fight off the bad ghosts instead of sitting through my classes."

Danny lightly cut into Jack's collar line, just scratching the clavicle on his right side. He watched the blood drip from Jack's body and onto the floor. Blood stained his dagger as he pulled it away from the skin. His smile grew as he felt himself getting high from the blood being drawn.

Maddie let out a blood-curdling scream as Danny pressed one of the first two knives deeper into Jack's lung. He coughed violently, and up came blood. His eyes widened in fear as he saw what Danny was doing.

"Danny, stop. Why are you doing this?"

Danny's eyes stared back at him, emotionless, blank, and red.

"Why did you try to kill me, why did you hunt me? Even after knowing that I was your son."

Tears welled in Jack's eyes as Danny formed a long blade in his dominant, right hand. His smile grew as he placed the blade in Jack's stomach, puncturing several internal organs including, but not limited to, Jack's stomach and liver, the large intestines, and one kidney. Jack gasped for air as Danny phased his hand through his chest and removed the diaphragm.

"Let's see what this does when it's in your throat rather than below your lungs!"

Maddie screamed and jumped at Danny. He snapped his fingers as he felt her moving behind him and her body froze in midair, surrounded by red energy. She fought with the air, Danny looking to his hands for a moment and seeing that he had never done this before with his ectoplasmic energy, but it had felt natural.

"How did I do this?"

Looking back, he remembered it as what Dan had done to Sam and Tucker to keep them from helping him. He smiled at it and began to move the energy upwards, finally attaching a bubble of energy containing his mom to the ceiling. He saw her pounding at the red energy, her hands, knees, and shins beginning to blister from the heat of the ectoplasm.

"Careful, or I'll have to make you fall to your death."

Danny laughed and returned to Jack, forcing the diaphragm down his throat. Jack's muffled cries filled the room as Danny pressed a knife into the side that had not yet been punctured. Danny pressed it into his lung from between two ribs. He phased his hands thought and removed Jack's heart. He took the heart to Maddie and laughed.

"He said at your wedding that you could have his heart. Well, here you go. It's yours!"

An almost psychotic laugh left Danny's throat as Maddie screamed at the heart. Jack was lying dead below them.

"Oops. Forgot to keep him alive with energy. Might as well destroy his body to show you what I can do. You can fear me. You can do nothing to stop me."

Danny watched as tears poured down Maddie's face as he burned Jack's heart, the dead body sitting below him. He turned to go after throwing the heart into the ectoplasmic bubble with his mom.

He dragged Jack's body onto the floor, seeing that he was nowhere near as tortured as Danny had wanted. He fell to his knees on Jack's side, his mind racing off of the chemicals that were in his brain as he had just killed his dad. He leaned across the body to be able to reach the other side of Jack and drag a burning knife across the whole body to reveal organs.

He used the stomach acid to begin dissolving the skin on Jack's arms and legs. He took the kidneys and placed one in each ear. He took the small intestines and set them to the side, not sure yet what to do with them, but making room to place the lungs. He sliced into Jack's chest and saw the empty cavity of where the heart had been just minutes before.

Danny ignored his mother's screams of agony, her throat beginning to go raw as she screamed at who she had called her son just days before knowing that he had killed. Danny turned and saw her banging on the ectoplasm with her entire forearms, blisters beginning to form and break as she refused to stop. He smirked to himself and returned back to Jack.

He moved his body towards the head and began to slice Jack's throat in twenty-seven places. He used his fist, accompanied by his power, to pound in Jack's skull. When he pulled away shards of the bone, he also removed the brain and let it sit alone on the floor for a few minutes as he decided what to do. Danny almost wanted to laugh as he decided to put Jack's intestine that he had removed into the skull, letting the ends - and a few sections where he had severed the intestine - hang out of the top of the skull where it had been broken. Danny set the brain in Jack's lap and set him up against a wall, blood trailing behind him.

He removed one of each limb - the left arm and right leg - and swapped them on the body. He used his powers to fuse the arm where the leg should have been, and then leg where the arm should have been. He listened as Maddie screamed so loud he was sure the neighbors could hear her just as well as he could.

An angry growl crossed his face as he heard her cry out to him.

"You are a monster, you are a mistake, you are a freak. You never will be able to rule over anyone if you're just going to kill everyone who upsets you!"

"Woman, I have my ways. You are not to speak, or I will be sure to cut your tongue from your mouth and remove your vocal box from your throat. Do you understand?"

"You just killed your own father! What is wrong with you?"

Danny snapped again, and he watched Maddie scream as she fell from the ceiling. He heard a loud, sickening crunch as she landed on her left arm and broke it. Maddie felt her fear of her son increase as a sly, evil look crossed his face. She felt herself trembling in fear of a ghost for the first time since discovering they existed as Danny approached her with his body radiating ectoplasmic energy. 

He walked over to her slowly, his hands pulsing red energy behind his back as he leaned over his mother, her unbroken arm barely holding her upper body off the floor. Her body quivered as she listened to Danny, his teeth beginning to show in his dark smile, anger being shown in his voice.

"There is nothing wrong with me. I meet the characteristics you have labeled all ghosts to have, so there is nothing wrong with me. Only with you. But I'll make sure everything wrong with you gets fixed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really glad that I've got a ton of free time now, so I can type this out whenever I get ideas. It's been really fun to type and mess around with this one, (enough that I avoid sleeping to type out my ideas before I forget them overnight. hahaha don't worry, I have a schedule now where I can be nocturnal and still get enough sleep... and I'm naturally a night owl, so we're all good with me typing). So I'm really excited about where this story will go and it's been really fun trying to decide where I put small extras to the story to show almost unneeded, yet fun to read and write details. Seriously, feel free to comment, criticize, request, and enjoy! I've been really enjoying writing this, so I hope you've been enjoying reading!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	6. Prevalent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go again! Chapter posted, and yes... It's 2 in the morning and I just got done typing. So I'm gonna be typing more pretty soon and hoping to have a good amount of chapters in next week. It's been so much fun writing this, and I'm so glad that I actually have somewhere to take it. Anyways, you might want to read this chapter and be ready for a new portion of Danny's journey that will be in Chapter 7. Enjoy!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Angela felt tears running down the sides of her face, her body quivering as she recalled what Danny had done in their house. She looked around the kitchen to see the destroyed floor and blood stains in several places. Dust, which had been part of Tucker's brain, littered the house.

She saw her husband walking down the stairs to see nothing but the blisters the ghost boy had caused him. She couldn't take her eyes off of them. Red rimmed his eyes from behind his glasses as he grabbed a glass of water.

"To think that Tucker was best friends with the young man who killed him."

"I know dear, I thought it was a bit strange too."

Angela walked next to the sink and waited for Maurice to finish filling his glass. She dipped her hands into a sink filled with dirty dishes and began to scrub.

"I just don't understand."

Maurice stood at her side, his face in a puzzled expression as he thought about what had happened to his son.

"What changed Danny? He had been such a good kid, fun-loving and kind. Now, he's a monster. I wouldn't want my son anywhere near him. Even what's left of his human has become a villain rather than a hero."

Angela sighed and rested her head on her husband's shoulder, her hands moving in a trained motion, her mind no longer thinking about the dishes she was doing.

"I don't know, sweetie. All I know is that Pamela told the Fentons to kill Danny and "avenge Sam's death" for them. If anybody has a chance at knowing why Danny became the monster he is now, it's them."

She heard a sigh from beside her, tears still rolling down her cheeks. She thought of her son and wondered if he could still see them. Her body shivered as she remembered what Danny had said to Tucker.

"Now, Tucker. Your parents are going to be given a task. They will go through with it. They will do as I say. They will watch your end become real. Should they not, Well, let's just say you'll be seeing them in hell."

Danny had said that about her and Maurice. He was claiming that Tucker was now in Hell after being murdered by a ghost. She looked back to the blood stains and where Tucker's stomach acid had eaten through the flooring. She gave it a look of hatred.

"To think that Danny was Tucker's friend and then decided to kill him. Why Tucker?"

Maurice walked away from where he had been leaning against the counter and began to try and answer her question.

"Maybe it was the fact that Tucker knew he was only half human? Or the fact that he was there when Danny got his ghost powers? Or maybe..."

Angela dried her hands and put a finger over Maurice's lips.

"Quiet now, honey. There's no way we will ever know for sure. It's not something we should stress over."

She paused herself and looked over at the oven and stove. She saw her baking supplies and smiled.

"How about we go over to the Fentons' house and invite the Mansons to come with us and we all enjoy cookies together since we've all lost a child in the past week?"

Maurice smiled at her for a moment before turning his body to look out the window, a dark figure flying away from the glass.

"I would love that. We ought to have fun remembering our kids together."

Angela smiled and walked to preheat the over, pulling out ingredients and supplies to make her town-famous chocolate chip cookies. Her mind took to baking cookies, remembering how many times Tucker had helped her with it. Angela almost wanted to laugh as her tears fell into the cookie dough as she mixed it up.

"The recipe did call for salt..."

. . .

Danny didn't bother to think. He let his ghost half control his whole being, ignoring the cries his human gave him to think about what he was doing and to be reasonable. He pushed every thought the human Danny gave to the side and grabbed his mother by the throat, hoisting her above his head.

Her screams filled the room, Danny smiling broadly with his mind focused on her rather than his addiction.

He lifted her higher, thanking his ghost half for having superhuman strength. Danny began walking her to where he had left Jack sitting against the wall. He held Maddie closer to the body than she felt comfortable.

"Well now. Are you afraid of your husband?"

He laughed, his hand not leaving her throat as she screamed in pure terror and rage for killing Jack. Danny yawned as she told him things he already knew.

"You're a monster, a freak! You're not my son, he would never kill anyone, especially not Jack, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker. You're nothing but an evil ghost."

Danny felt his power surge through his palm and strike his mom, blisters breaking around her neck from his energy. He watched her try and claw her way out of his grip, but nothing she did was working. He laughed as Maddie cried out in pain.

"Oh, yes. I know those things about me. But I like it this way, and you will never be able to change that."

Danny felt himself smile, but a piercing pain struck his lower lip. He dropped Maddie on the floor, tied up with ectoplasmic ropes, and dashed to the mirror in his old room. Staring at himself he was barely able to stop smiling. A breathy voice left Danny's mouth as he lifted his hands to his mouth.

"Woah. I have fangs."

He felt himself wanting to leap with joy as he saw another improvement to himself. A thought struck him as he looked himself over for more changes.

"I wonder if now I have fangs in my human form too."

He quickly changed himself back to being Fenton for a moment to see if he was changed. He looked in the mirror for a moment, not seeing anything different, and a look of disappointment crossed his face. He dropped his suitcase filled with stuff and slowly walked back down the stairs to where his mom was.

She saw him and gasped loud enough that Danny could hear it from across the room. He stared her in the eyes before smiling again.

"I figured it would be more terrifying to have the person you knew as your son for 17 years kill you rather than his alternate identity."

Danny smiled again before he began feeling the same pain that he had when his eyes had been turned red. He collapsed to his knees and pressed his palms to the sides of his head, his fingers curling to make a fist. He tasted blood in his mouth as he sat there for a moment, his body flashing between numb and having feeling. He tried to stand himself back up, but every part of his body gave out and he fell to the floor, lying on his back and waiting for the side effects to wear off.

He felt his body able to stand up after a few minutes, his mom screaming in terror as she saw him spit blood into the kitchen sink several times. He stood himself properly upright in front of her, his face emotionless and blank. He watched tears run down Maddie's face and felt his power pulse from his hands.

He walked closer to her and his face began to change as perfect fitting daggers began to form themselves in his hands. His lips began to curl, his eyebrows lowering into an evil smirk. He saw Maddie try to inch away from him, hitting her head on the wall. This only made things worse for her fear.

Danny's teeth began to show in his smile until a completely evil grin covered his face. There was a flaw to his face, however. Maddie's eyes widened as she saw Danny's smile.

His teeth were coated in blood, every tooth now colored the signature shade of red. She also saw a set of fangs protruding from his upper gums. They had replaced where his canine teeth had been before. As he grinned broader more red from his mouth showed itself. Blood began to drip down Danny's face, dropping to his shirt and the tiled floor.

Maddie screamed as she saw blood and fangs on her human son. The glowing red eyes didn't help. She let out a raw scream as she mourned her daughter, and now her son. She now knew that this boy was not her child.

"Yes, Maddie. That's it. Scream all you want. I've killed your daughter, and now am killing away what's left of your human son."

"You monster! You have no idea what you're doing! How dare you take my children from me!"

"Yes, yes. Keep screaming at me."

He chuckled for a moment before telling Maddie what he had wanted to do for the past few days.

"After all, my scream will always have more power and will always overpower yours."

He took a deep breath in, knowing that even if he released the power in this house, it was too secure to fall on top of them. Not that it would be able to hurt Danny. He could just go intangible if the building began to collapse. He finished breathing in.

As Danny opened his mouth, blood-filled saliva stretched from the bottom of his mouth to the top. It flew towards Maddie in droplets as red waves of energy began forcing everything against the wall, including Maddie. Danny saw her ears bleeding to the eerie, obnoxious scream coming from his well-filled lungs.

After several minutes, Danny ran out of air in his lungs and stopped screaming. He watched as everything fell from the wall to the floor, including Jack and his now smashed brain. Maddie was laying on her side, the ectoplasmic ropes that had been around her disintegrating from the scream the Danny had given.

"Do you like that, Maddie?"

Danny pressed his hands into his back, his grin making him even eviler looking as he walked towards her, his face still had blood on it, his body language scaring her as he turned to look out the window like every other villain in the movies has always done before making a speech about what they were doing. Only Danny wasn't planning on a speech about his plans. He heard Maddie try to push herself off the ground and turned around so fast his eyes took a moment to refocus before he could see again.

"What was that scream?"

Maddie had grabber her head in pain, her ears still bleeding, blood dripping onto her jumpsuit as she leaned against the wall for support. Danny chuckled for a moment as he looked to her.

"It's called a ghostly wail. You've been close to it before, but you never seemed to notice it. It's like you were blind to my ghost half."

He laughed to himself for a moment before stating his thought.

"You seem to be blind to ghosts in generally almost all the time."

Danny saw Maddie look for a way out of the house, most of the furniture and decorations having been flung in one general direction and blocking every exit she knew of. He watched the look of panic spread on her face.

"No way out, huh?"

Maddie gave him a glare of anger and fear mixed together. He only smirked as she tried to push a pile of rubble out of her way. He floated himself over and landed next to her, still human.

"There's no way you're getting away from me this time."

Danny recalled the number of times he had wanted to kill his mother but she escaped. Like when she wouldn't let it go that Danny came home from school with a couple of bruises and a sore side - nobody knew that three of his ribs were broken. Danny insisted that it was nothing, that he fell in the stairwell on his way to class, but Maddie wouldn't let it go. Danny had wanted her to be dead then.

When he had tried to attack her as the ghost boy as revenge from hurting Cujo, she got away from him with a few shots from the ectoblaster, making him too injured to keep fighting and had to fly away and come home as Danny Fenton instead of destroying her as Phantom.

Danny felt himself growling as he remembered the times that he wanted Maddie to be gone. She had backed up against the wall. Danny let her hear his growl, his body beginning to glow vibrantly. He felt himself get into his feeling of being high as he pointed a knife at Maddie's throat, marks from where he had been holding her still visible as red lines from his fingers.

Danny smirked, his new fangs just poking out onto his lower lip, the waves or red power still flowing off of his human body. He looked to Maddie with anger in his eyes.

"I've been waiting a long time for this."

Without warning, he punched her in the stomach. Her lungs began to protrude from her mouth, and Danny forced energy into Maddie to keep her alive as he grabbed her lungs and threw them as hard as he could against the wall on the opposite side of the room. He looked back to see Maddie pressing into her lower abdomen to find that her organs had all shifted up into where her lungs had been.

A sickening splat echoed in the pure silence as the lungs finally slammed into the wall.

Danny continued to pour energy into Maddie's body and kept it so that he could torture her for a while, as well as pouring energy into his hands to form two blazing red knives at his sides. He forced one into her lower back, puncturing the skin and being so accurate that it severed the spinal cord. Her whole body fell limp, but the energy and power Danny made course through her body kept the nerves functioning. The only thing she couldn't do was move. Maddie had been paralyzed by her own son.

"How does it feel to have your own son killing you?"

Danny made repeated cuts on the front of Maddie's midsection. The cuts layered over the scars she had from C-Sections that Jazz and Danny had given her. She had tears running down her face as Danny smiled and cut away at her body, every nerve screaming in agony. The only problem was, without lungs, she couldn't scream out loud. Only mentally.

Danny looked her in the eyes as he cut, his body moving in a rhythmic pattern as he continued to slice into her skin. Danny gave Maddie a blank stare as he looked her in the eyes, but she saw a high teenager whenever he looked back to what he was doing. He forced himself to move on, wanting more of the emotion he felt when he was in the midst of killing.

He took a knife to her arm and began cutting into the muscle, peeling away layer after layer of the tissue, just as thin as he had to peel an onion for the microscope lab in science when he was a freshman. He saw her wanting to scream out at him, which only made him smile more, and gave him an idea. He chopped her left arm off, along with her right leg and carried them over to where Jack's body was.

Maddie watched in silence as Danny took Jack's arm and leg - the limbs that had been in the correct position - from his body and began to fuse hers to his body, of course with the arm where the leg should have gone and the leg where the arm was supposed to be. Maddie wanted to laugh and tell Danny to go take an anatomy class to know where these limbs went but she only got a few sputtering noises before she remembered that she didn't have lungs.

Danny heard the noises and looked over at Maddie, a smug grin covering the lower half of his face, as he finished replacing Jack's arm and leg. He picked up the two limbs and brought them over to Maddie. Before he could be stopped, he was attaching Jack's limbs to Maddie's body. She felt tears fall down her one cheek, having to run across the bridge of her nose thanks to gravity and her laying on her side as Danny melted skin. 

He formed a knife and began to cut away chunks of Maddie's hair. His hands never shook as he made parts of her scalp bald and bleeding, leaving others untouched.

"How does it feel? Painful emotionally? Physically? Both?"

Danny laughed.

"Oh, who cares. I'm enjoying myself. And right now, that's about all that matters. I already know this is hurting you. After all, you're being murdered by your son."

An evil laugh echoed through the otherwise silent house. He pulled his knife to the side and quickly punched Maddie's skull, forcing energy to shoot through her body. Every muscle rapidly spasmed as the energy shocked Maddie. Danny pulled his hand away and watched her eyes grow wide, tears forming a puddle on the floor, mixing with the blood around her.

"Do you understand now? Do you know why I had to stop being good?"

He gave a play on the word good, sarcasm dripping from his mouth as he half smiled and began to cut at her shoulders and neck. Maddie wanted to scream, 'What is wrong with you?!' but only a few gurgles left her mouth. Danny grinned at this and continued cutting, making eye contact with Maddie as he began each slice.

Her skin was blistering quickly from the blade, so mutilated that not even stitches would be able to repair the skin that was now able to be peeled off like it was pasta dough.

Danny peeled away the skin and muscle tissue around the collarbone and throat. He laid it over her midsection to get it out of the way, forcing energy into her to keep her alive, her body refusing to lie still as Danny poked at her heart.

“For being a heartless ghost hunter, your organ seems to be the standard size.”

He smiled as he watched it beat, his mind wondering what to do next. He slit a hole into the heart, blood began to spurt from the muscle each time it attempted to pump blood. He grinned at it and refused to look away. Maddie watched it with wide eyes, light reflecting from her eyes as she watched her blood fly into the air.

Danny formed a knife in his hand and took it closer to her face. He cut at her cheek, blood running down the side of her face and into what was left of her hair. Danny then stabbed her in the eye, just as he had done to Sam. He felt the knife slide through the fluid the eye contained, Maddie’s mouth opening in what would have been a scream if she still had lungs.

Danny felt himself grab one kidney and place it in the eye socket. He took his hand and fused it to the skin around the eye. He watched as his mom's stomach began to convulse, nothing in it to come up. His hands only felt that now he needed to fix that. He formed two more daggers in his hands and held them over the liver, slicing it out of her midsection. He quietly held it for a moment to stare at it in thought.

"Just imagine how this would look had you started drinking like you had wanted to when the ghost boy first showed up in town. Just when I phased through the ground because I was fighting another ghost. You were going to be an alcoholic just because you hadn't destroyed me after seeing me a few times."

He let out a small, single laugh, his mouth still closed as he made the sound for Maddie to hear.

"Oh well. It'll be even worse than if you were drinking when I'm done with it."

He quickly phased his hand and her liver into Maddie's stomach, the acid eating away at the organ tissues that had been inserted. He saw Maddie gag at the idea of digesting her own liver. Maddie's one eye was clenched tightly closed as Danny pressed into her organs so hard that her remaining two limbs raised themselves off the floor until he released the pressure.

He grabbed onto her intestines and stood himself up, dropping the long, slimy organ onto Maddie's lap. He pressed into her skull and let the bone shatter before melting the fragments that he had collected into her brain with his power. Raw energy flowed through his hands as he formed a small fire and set every portion of Maddie ablaze.

Danny smelled the burning flesh and hair, watching the flames run out of fuel, nothing but a charred corpse sitting in front of him. He looked and saw the melted skull and soupy brains, broken bones and blistered limbs. He looked to the side and saw Jack's mutilated body, every portion of it completely destroyed from the heat that had escaped Maddie's body. Some of his limbs being cooked like chicken.

Danny looked to see that the floor was destroyed. A psychotic evil laugh left his mouth for several minutes as he waited for his high to wear off and he could finish his plan for the afternoon. This evening he had other plans. However, if he was still high, his plans would fail him. He would still be killing rather than ruling properly.

He listened intently for the cloaked ghosts to talk to him but heard nothing. Disappointment almost clouded his mind. He hung his head and waited for his high to disappear. He walked around the house for what he was planning on making the last time for almost an hour before he felt like himself enough to avoid killing more people.

Quietly, he dragged his parents out onto the steps of the house, right outside his front door. He grabbed a whiteboard from the lab and rolled it out to sit behind his parents.

He decided that it would be smarter to leave a message to the public, otherwise, they would never know what happened to the Fentons. He put a finger to his lips to think and decided to drag what was left of Jazz's body out to sit between Jack and Maddie. He quietly dragged her corpse onto the steps and laughed. Nobody was out on the streets watching him, so I just let himself laugh as he wrote out the message.

'The Fentons have all been killed except Danny. He has something to say to every person of Amity Park. If you wish to know who did this to these people, come watch Danny's speech outside city hall at 6 PM tomorrow. -Fentom'

He left an odd signature at the bottom of the note. He looked at it to see that it was almost just a combination of his human name and his ghost name. The signature shocked him.

Danny didn't know why he felt the need to sign the board, but it felt wrong to not show that a ghost had written it. Yet, with it being a combination of both names, nobody would know it was a ghost because of how blind everyone was to his ghost half. He looked the sign over again and again.

"Your plan is almost foolproof."

"You're going to go far with this idea."

A smirk crossed Danny's face as he heard the ghosts praising his idea, even though the fact that they could read his mind was a bit unsettling. He was just about ready to scream in pure anger because he was sick of people knowing what he was thinking about every second of every day when he heard his thoughts just stop altogether. He blinked a few times, a look of shock crossing his face.

His hands fell to his sides as he heard the ghosts.

"You will never be able to consider us a council if you do not let us see and know what you are planning to do."

"Yes, but, I would much prefer if I got to tell you, not that you just read my mind. It's kinda creeping me out... And I'm a ghost!"

Danny almost felt somebody nod their head as the ghosts came to an agreement in his mind.

"That is a reasonable request. You shall tell us plans in order for us to know them. You will have freedom in your brain unless speaking to us. We will still watch you, but we will not enter your brain."

Danny smiled, feeling the ghosts leave him to be on his own. He waited to see if anyone was around but saw nobody leave their home. He quietly forced the ground to shake with his raw energy, the power he had fallen in love with shaking buildings, causing street lights to fall, leaving nothing the way it was. He quickly forced himself to go ghost and turn invisible as people began to walk out of their homes.

He swiftly flew directly upward to avoid being felt as people screamed in fear and ran over to see the dead bodies of who he had called his family. A silent laugh shook his body as he watched for another minute before deciding to fly towards the other side of the neighborhood. People were walking over to FentonWorks from all directions, calling out to each other as they saw the dead bodies.

"These people are so stupid."

Danny flew off, his hair blowing in his face until he pushed it out of the way. He landed himself outside of one building and looked in the window. He saw Tucker's parents talking quietly, tears fell from their faces as they seemed to still be mourning Tucker.

"Oh, it's not that big of a deal. Get over it already."

Danny rolled his eyes as he whispered to the Foleys. He saw them look out the window and see him, and he quickly forced himself to walk away from the window.

"My goal wasn't to be seen. Dang it! Now I'm never gonna know what their plans were for tomorrow... Stupid, stupid, stupid! I never should have said anything out loud."

Danny forced himself to start running, his feet hitting the ground hard. He pushed himself into the air and took a deep breath. He quickly landed himself right outside the house he knew belonged to the Mansons. He walked up to a window in the front, this time making sure he kept himself invisible and silent.

He watched for a moment as Sam's parents searched the house to find where their phones were as they heard them ringing. He listened carefully and was able to tell where the phones were. This earned them an extreme eye roll from the invisible teenager. He listened to the phone call.

Danny focused his energy on listening and got the information he was looking for.

"Angela, I guess we can go with you to see the Fentons. Perhaps we could discuss how they were the reason our children are dead."

"I see. Well, if you're going to bring cookies then I'll be sure to bring a pan of brownies. And maybe some vegetables for that fat oaf, Jack."

"Yes, Angela. You can meet us here and then we can walk over together."

Pamela paused for a moment and looked out the window. Danny made sure he couldn't be seen, even though he was invisible. He waited for Pamela to stop staring out the window for what felt like a century. Her head finally turned away and facing the other way she continued speaking.

"No, we haven't seen that freak that's a murderer. Is he a ghost or a human?"

"Well, I haven't seen either. And I doubt that Jeremy's seen him and not told me."

"Of course. I'll see you tomorrow then. Good night."

Pamela hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen. Quickly the ingredients for brownies were whipped onto the counters, ready to be made. Danny watched her program the oven to preheat, his hands rubbing together, a smirk showing that now he knew the plan. He watched Pamela begin baking, Jeremy coming in to taste what she was making as she made it.

"Wow. They almost seem human when they're together."

Danny pressed his foot into the ground and took off to the skies. His mind spoke to him as he flew back towards the abandoned house he had been staying in. He landed out front and began to go inside when he heard a small scream from down the street.

"AHHHH OH MY GOD!!! This ghost is attacking us by living in the neighborhood!"

Danny gave the screaming woman a bored look and shot her with ectoplasm. She fell onto the street and scraped both of her knees and the palms of her hands. She ran off, but no more screams left her mouth. Danny rolled his eyes as he watched her run. His body trudged back to where he was staying, phasing inside before he began pacing the creaky, wooden floors.

"So the Foleys and Mansons are going to be going to the Fentons for cookies and to talk about how they've each lost a child, huh? I guess that means they'll see what happened to my parents. I already know that the rest of the town is too afraid to call the police and get rid of the bodies. They'll still be sitting there on the steps tomorrow."

Danny laughed to himself as he waited for himself to be able to think rather than being excited and unable to think. He slowly let his breath out of his lungs and began to think.

"So, tomorrow I get to see the reactions for my dead family sitting on the front porch. I can't wait to see just how these annoying, weak, pathetic humans react to it."

He forced himself to sit on the floor, almost in the exact same place as he had the night before. He felt his body finally catch up with the fact that he was beyond exhausted. He let his body sink closer to the floor, still leaning on the wall. He let himself begin to fall asleep as he remembered what happened that same day. His mind began to dream as he fell asleep, quickly returning him to repeating his memories. Two more were now added to the dream he called rehab.

The last thing Danny remembered before he fell asleep was muttering his thanks to the cloaked ghosts for giving him another chance and a place to take out his anger and addiction.

The ghost boy was lying on his side when the cloaked ghosts looked at him. They saw that he was ready for the next step. Danny didn't wake up as his body began to seize violently, the ghosts pouring raw power into his body.

As it settled down, Danny returned to his human body, the power settling inside of him. His body stopped moving, but an eerie red glow surrounded him, pulsing between green and red, finally settling on red.

"He is finally ready. The new Phantom is the better version."

"He will never be defeated."

The ghosts flew off, their words finding their way into Danny's dream, waking him up to see himself glowing. His body quickly felt what it was capable of, what energy he had left leaving him until he wasn't just asleep, but passed out into a comatose state so deep, people would have said he was dead. Completely dead, not just half dead.

Danny didn't see when the energy got so bright the entire street in the neighborhood lit up. People from all over the place opened their windows to see what the light was, but the heat from Danny's power caused blisters all over their bodies.

The screams of pain coming from the entire area helped Danny sleep in as much peace as a ghost could be in the whole night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess that wasn't my favorite chapter ending, but it's where it's going next that will be a lot more fun. If you came here because the first chapter is a lot more violent and now I'm getting a lot less violent with the scenes, it's pretty much just running out of creativity for the physical description, so a lot may be more emotional until I feel more creative or decide how to reuse past actions.  
> Now that that's out of the way, I wanted to let you know that I will be having a few things going on in the next couple weeks, but I plan to keep writing and updating this work. It just may just be two or three days between updates instead of every other day or every day. That's about all my updates. Please, comment, request, criticize, and enjoy!
> 
> -Phantomgirl15


	7. Capability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD, I"M SO SORRY!
> 
> I know, I totally promised that I would have something out every few days. I was planning to and had tons of ideas in my mind and had chosen what was gonna happen next... and then some family stuff came up and I couldn't really find time to type. I've been super busy this past week unexpectantly, so here's something to make up for it. I'm probably not gonna have much up until next week since I've got more family stuff going on and am helping a friend move and blah blah blah, nobody really cares - just know I'm busy and not just trying to get out of typing. I love doing this. And that stuff is going on until Sunday afternoon, so I'll be able to start typing them.  
> So far, this story has been a pleasure to write, so I hope you guys are enjoying it. It is getting hard to get creative with it in some places, but a challenge isn't always bad, so I'm still having fun.  
> Anyway, let me know if you have any requests, and feel free to comment and criticize. Enjoy!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Brownies in the Manson house were never burnt, but the night before, Pamela had forgotten about them while mourning her daughter and let them turn into a crisp. It was now morning, she was feeling slightly better, and was being much more careful while she remade the brownies.

Pamela felt her hand begin to ache as she held the mixer over her brownie batter. Her heart sank, remembering how Sam started refusing to eat her homemade brownies when she decided to be, as she called it, unique. Pamela swiftly forced her fallen tears to the edge of her cheeks, letting the pained emotions settle within the kitchen. She heard footsteps behind her.

"Who's there?"

Pamela swung herself around to see her husband, Jeremy, holding his palms out to her in surrender to her flying brownie batter and whipped spatula. A small smile crossed his face as she looked at him.

"It's just me, sweetheart. No maniacal, evil ghost boy is here now."

Pamela felt her breathing become labored as her heart rate lowered. Jeremy knew her fears, and she hadn't even told him. Her arms began to fall limp near Pamela's ribcage.

"Sorry, dear. I guess you could say that I'm a bit nervous. If that nefarious freak had the guts to murder our daughter, who's to say he wouldn't venture to do the same to us?"

She chewed at her lower lip.

"You heard what he said, that the Foleys would see their son in Hell? At least, that's what Angela told me."

Pamela's lip began to bleed, her teeth unable to stop biting at it, the taste of blood becoming a distraction from her distress. Jeremy walked closer to her and began to caress her cheek, wiping away tears.

"Darling, there's no way Tucker and/or Sam are in Hell. Not even Jazz could be there. They were children. Young, kind, and good. That ghost is just trying to scare you. Please, be the brave, strong-willed woman I married."

Pamela leaned herself on her husband, not saying a word to him as her tears ran down the skin. Jeremy felt the neckline to her dress being damp, and quietly whispered for her to change her clothing - he would keep an eye on the brownies that were now in the oven.

Pamela gave him a thoughtless grin, her lips curling slightly, but only enough to show reflex, not true joy.

Pamela didn't want to disappoint her husband, but she heard the light joking tone to his voice fade away as he saw her begin to leave, tears crashing into the linoleum tiles. Jeremy reached his arm out for her, but Pamela ignored it. She walked into her room and changed her outfit, getting ready to leave and see the Foleys and the Fentons. She found a fuschia dress that she loved and slipped it on, along with a pair of matching, strappy heels.

Pamela walked down the stairs and saw Jeremy holding the pan of perfectly baked sweets in his arm with some oven mitts, waiting to open the door for her so they could leave together.

"Thank you, dear."

She finally was able to give a small smile, her husband nodding to her as he held the door. Pamela leaned her head against his chest, her eyes wanting to see Sam running ahead of them laughing. She found herself walking to the Foleys house the long way, taking every last turn she was able to spot. Her mind drifted off task, and Jeremy began having to steer her in the right direction.

To be honest with herself, she was dreading this day. She didn't want to admit that her only child had been murdered by the person Sam had called a best friend. Whatever happened to Danny had to have been extremely traumatic. As much as Pamela didn't want to admit it, he wasn't that bad of a kid. He was kind, made Sam laugh, and was always a geek for astronomy. The only thing was that he was weird. His whole family was. Pamela had been sure that he was the reason that Sam called herself goth and was always mad at her family. She spent a lot of time with Danny, almost more than she spent with her parents.

Pamela felt herself thinking hard about Sam and Danny now. She remembered Sam flirting with Danny, telling great stories about him after school. She looked up to him greatly, but never once looked up to her parents. Danny was always making her laugh, making sure she was happy, making sure she was healthy, making sure she was able to be herself. He even gave her strange, unique presents that he had found in his parents' ghost lab.

Then Pamela realized what had made her hate him so intensely. Her anger rose in her face, tinting her face pink and red. His idea of music, books, fun things to do, being plain... It was the reason her daughter was nothing like her. Sam never enjoyed being rich like she should have. If she had never met that pain in the neck Fenton kid, things never would have turned out this way and Pamela would have had a wonderful relationship with her daughter, Sam.

But that wasn't the case. It never would be the case, especially not now.

She felt her hand automatically knocking on the door at the Foleys' house. A small tear fell down her cheek as Angela and Maurice opened the door, holding cookies, dressed nicely to go mourn their three children. Four, if you counted the fact that Danny had basically killed himself and started a new life - if you could call it that.

Angela began to walk towards Pamela for a hug. Her body was in auto drive as she hugged Angela back. Maurice walked outside too and closed the door behind himself. He handed the cookies to Angela as she held her hands out.

"It's great to see you guys. Thank you for inviting us to do this with you."

Pamela tried to fake a smile, but the memories of Sam flooded her mind - too strong to control, too upsetting to smile about.

"Oh, absolutely. It wouldn't be the same without you guys. I remember how much Tucker talked about Sam and Danny. Even communicated with Jazz, last I knew."

Jeremy smiled and began answering for Pamela as they walked down the street. She wanted to drag her feet, pain beginning in her feet from her heels. She now regretted her shoe choice.

"How have you guys been holding up about Tucker?"

"Oh, you know. Random times of crying, missing the fun we had with him, wanting that ghost kid destroyed... but it's not like we could have stopped it."

Angela gave off a small laugh as she finally showed her anger to somebody else. Her voice even showed how mad she was as Danny, even if she didn't want it to.

"Yes, I know that feeling. We don't understand why he chose to kill our kids, though. If he was friends with Sam and Tucker, then why kill them? And why would he want to kill his sister?"

Jeremy questioned his own thoughts for a moment before he turned his head back to see how far they were from FentonWorks. He could see the building not too far ahead of him but noticed something sitting on the steps. He nudged Pamela back into focusing on what they were doing.

Pamela quickly let herself look at the front steps to the building. There was no way her husband really saw anything. He shouldn't have had to bother her until they got there. She needed rest, after all. Pamela took her shoes off and began jogging towards the building. As she got closer, she could smell something rotting. Pamela waved her hand to signal that the others might want to come.

The thick, wooden railing blocked off the majority of the view from the side, so Pamela and Angela made their way to the front to see what it was. Pamela froze as she saw a giant board behind something, a note written on it talking about the Fenton kid that now nobody standing at FentonWorks liked.

Pamela began looking down, seeing nothing but black for a moment before realizing what this blackened pile was. She saw that it was the rest of the Fentons except Danny, that he had announced their deaths by placing them on the stairs. Pamela felt herself getting woozy from the corpses in front of her.

As her husband caught her while she passed out, the last thing she remembered hearing was a blood-curdling scream from Angela.

. . .

Danny woke up on the ground, his body telling him that he needed to be awake while his brain told him to keep sleeping. He just laid on his side for several minutes before realizing that everyone in town had seen the vibrant red light that he had produced from his body.

He gave it a quick smile and began to pick himself up off the ground. He saw that he had turned into his human half while in his sleep and frowned.

"Well, that can't be right. How am I gonna scare anybody as a human?"

He quickly returned himself to his ghost form, his body almost aching from the violent seizing and power outbursts. He tried to loosen a few muscles, but all that did was show him where he was sore. His mind tried to think of what he could do to rid himself of the slight pain.

As he paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do, he felt himself getting more stiff. His body almost didn't want to move at all.

"This is weird."

Danny mumbled to himself as he felt himself stop pacing because his legs refused to move. He decided that he would just use his powers until his body decided to work with him. As he readied himself for launch into the sky, every muscle and every joint that moved hurt. Danny had to hold back a few moans of pain. His feet began to push up, but before he knew it, he was flying almost at the speed of sound. Danny thought back to his physics class and remembered that speed traveled at three hundred and forty-three meters/second. His brain began to think.

"I'm really going that fast, because now I'm just now hearing that surprised shout that I gave, then I'm going at about... Seven hundred and sixty-seven miles per hour."

Danny let out a cry of joy, seeing that this was something new with his powers. His speed before had only been one hundred and twelve miles per hour. A thought hit him when he realized that he was no longer sore.

"I'm in a power mode. It's like when I found that I had those ice powers. It was built up inside me and had nowhere to go. This is part of my new power!"

Danny clenched his hands into fists and let himself continue to fly. He felt himself stop above the center of town, his energy building up within his core and his veins. His blood beginning to boil as he closed his eyes and bit at his lip, blood being drawn by the fangs he forgot he had. The smell of blood reached his nose and he felt himself want to kill. His energy continued to build.

After what felt like an hour, but was only about five minutes, Danny let every part of his energy out of himself. He felt the heat from his power flow off of him, a scream leaving his lungs so loud he could have sworn the people in the next town over could hear him as the energy blasted in every direction. He saw that it had destroyed a few of the taller buildings, their remains flaming with an unnatural shade of red energy. He saw people in the street screaming with fear, blisters covering their exposed skin. He laughed at the few people left on the street.

Danny felt that he had once again gained the amount of control over his power that he needed. He felt his strength pulsing in his core, his fear of being taken down leaving his mind, his need to kill increasing. His smile made his fangs glitter in the sunlight as he thought about what time of day it was. The Foleys and Mansons ought to be on their way to his old home.

He flew himself back towards the ground, his speed sensationally fast compared to what it had been before. He saw that the two families were on their way, but weren't close. He decided he had one more thing to try in the house before he saw their reactions. He quickly dashed up to the second floor, his body excited to see if he really had control of himself. His mirror showed him how he looked now.

To be honest, he looked more dead than before. His eyes were burning an eerie shade of red, but so bright that it illuminated the hair covering his forehead when he dipped his head. He saw his upper fangs, replacing his canines and able to draw blood at any time, either that or they would scare anyone who saw.

Danny forced himself to return to his human state, the only details remaining were the red eyes and fangs. Other than that Danny was completely different from how he wanted to be.

"Time to try something new."

Danny almost looked into the mirror fearfully. He opened his mouth wide enough that he could see all of his upper teeth. With pure willpower he forced his fangs to retract, looking nothing like regular, human canines. He shocked himself that he could do it. As he thought hard for a moment, he remembered how Sam had told him about a book where the vampires were able to hide their fangs, so that people thought they were human until they began to drink blood.

"I guess she was good for one thing..."

Danny chuckled to himself as he remembered her telling him about the story. He tried to remember if she had mentioned anything about the eyes but thought of nothing. He began to focus on his eyes intently, his mind forcing him to remember the old Fenton. He saw his eyes flash blue and jumped back, crying out in pure shock. He saw his body going flying back towards the bed as he jumped away from the mirror he had been staring into. He saw his body almost flinching as he saw the old version of himself staring back at him.

Danny picked himself up and walked back over to the mirror on his old dresser. He saw his reflection as he had red eyes, but his fangs were hidden. This time, as Danny tried, he blinked his eyes shut, and once they were open and his vision was focused, his eyes were the innocent, pale blue they had been a week ago. He smiled at this and gave off a fake innocent face.

"Oh, this is gonna make that speech even better later today!"

He pumped his hand into the air, his mind rushing as he remembered the speech he was going to give. He had to try one more thing though.

Danny pushed his limits. If he was able to flash his eyes green before, then why not be able to flash them red now? It would only make it easier to go through with his later plans. He pressed into his power, his energy surging through his bloodstream. A small flash of red, not enough to go noticed, shone in his eyes.

Anger burned through Danny's chest. He felt himself growling at himself.

"You lame idiot! How is it you can destroy anyone and anything, but you can't make your eyes flash red!"

Danny saw his eyes change color for the right amount of time. Enough to be noticed, and feared. His grin grew as he realized how to change his eye color.

"So while I'm holding them blue, they change color with mood. Huh. That should be easy enough, considering how mad I am all the time now."

An evil laugh left Danny's throat as he heard footsteps outside his house. He quickly returned himself to his ghost form and flew out the window, circling around the building to see the Foleys and the Mansons getting close to seeing where his family was lying dead.

Danny hovered over his old home, wanting to laugh again but refusing so that nobody would realize that they were being watched. He turned himself invisible and flew in to see what was happening up close. He saw Pamela getting closer to the steps, not really sure what was in front of her. Angela followed quickly behind and nearly dropped the platter she was holding.

A sickening scream came from her mouth as she realized what she was looking at. Danny only wanted to laugh more, his ideas of perfect being met. The scream was well timed, the shock what he was going for, the tears flowing down their faces beyond enjoyable. He heard cries of agony coming from below him, hearts shattering as his parents were grieved.

Danny couldn't help but laugh after that. He smiled when he realized his voice had deepened enough that he no longer sounded like a kid. The two sets of parents looked up to see his fanged grin and glowing crimson eyes staring back at them.

"You're a monster! You know that, right? I don't care what kind of freak you are, I'll make sure you pay for this!"

Angela let out her pain from the deaths of her child and some friends as she screamed at the ghost boy. Maurice had to hold her back as she tried to get closer to Danny. He just stared at her, nothing on his face changing from the evil smile except for him raising an eyebrow.

Danny didn't move far but mocked Angela for a moment.

"And I'll kill anyone who comes after me. You know that, right?"

He leaned the top half of his body down towards her, his arms crossing over his chest as he made fun of the woman who was almost insane from her mourning.

"Not to mention that even with you calling me a monster, I like it this way."

An almost insane laugh left his mouth as he looked into the sky. The four adults cowering below him refusing to offend him, lest they get killed by the ghost boy who was trying to take over the town, one person at a time. Danny's laugh began to cease as the adults fell to their knees in tears. He looked back at them, no emotion in his face, but force echoing through his voice.

"I expect you to be at that speech later. But if you say one word about who I am, I shall make sure you die in a way you never will forget, even in your grave and in Hell with your kids. I'll make sure to torture you as if there's not even an ounce of humanity left in me."

Danny landed himself and began to dramatically walk away from the parents of who he had called friends. As a ghost, he forced his body to fade away as they watched him leave, quaking in fear from his threats. Danny heard a few cries for help, but nobody responded. His mind told him that it was time to go put his plan into action.

. . .

Danny found himself walking down the street, his hair black, his eyes blue, his smile human, and his outfit Fenton's usual. He wound up walking right up to the steps of City Hall, his brain trying to decide what to say as he walked up the front steps and phased into the building.

It took his eyes a moment to readjust to the lighting, well enough that he could see the labels on the office doors. He quickly spotted the mayor's office and phased himself through the door. His body began to ache from not getting to kill as he saw the mayor look up at him, his deep blue eyes and a not so nice grin greeting him.

"Hello, Daniel. I was wondering when you would show up."

Danny crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on his heels.

"I'm not in the mood for this... this playful talk, Plasmius. I've got business to give to you."

Vlad dropped his smile. His eyes floated over Danny's body, seeing the red gleaming from his eyes and fangs at the brink of puncturing the skin on his lower lip. Vlad's voice lowered as he saw the changes in Danny.

"What do you want?"

His question almost at a whisper as he saw that Danny was being dead serious about having some business to attend to.

Danny scoffed at him, his upper body moving only slightly as he heard Vlad trying to see what was happening.

"You're going to let me give a speech to all of Amity Park this evening at six. And if you don't? Well, let's just say I've got something else planned for you."

Danny played with his fingernails as he explained what he needed done to Vlad. He looked up after he was done to see Vlad laughing at him.

"Oh Daniel, that's hilarious. There's no way you could defeat me and make me announce your pathetic little speech."

Vlad stood up and began to walk towards Danny, but a glowing red beam of energy shot him back into his chair before he could even get around his desk. He looked down to see the chest of his suit burnt, the skin underneath beginning to be burnt along with it.

"What are you doing?"

Danny walked a few steps forward.

"Did you see the red energy that burnt people last night? Did you notice the pulsing waves that destroyed the three tallest buildings in town? Did you notice that you stopped getting text messages from Jack?"

Vlad gulped, his throat feeling uncomfortably dry as Danny leaned closer to him, his mouth whispering right into his ear.

"That's all me."

Vlad pushed the young, mostly dead teenager away from him in fear, his neck dripping cold sweat.

"There's no way that was you, Daniel. There's no possible way you did that damage."

Danny let out a dark, maniacal laugh.

"Try me, old man."

Vlad rushed into one of the drawers on his desk, searching intensely for his phone, looking to see if Jack was still texting him and if Danny was only joking.

"See, Jack texted me."

"When?"

Vlad's face paled as he saw the date that he had received the text.

"Three days ago."

Vlad felt Danny walk up behind him and look out the window. He pointed out to FentonWorks and gave Vlad the reason his, "best friend" had stopped texting him. A look of insanity and withdrawal filled his eyes.

"I'm the reason. I killed Jack. I've killed Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Jazz, Jack, and Maddie Fenton. They're all dead now. And it was because of me."

Danny turned to Vlad, blood running down his face as his fangs pierced his lip.

"Because I am all powerful."

Vlad felt his mind trying to put together what was said as he watched Danny's body glow a deep red, blood still running down his face. He took his hands and charged them with bright, eerie ecto-energy that matched the power pulsing around him.

"I have power running through my blood. Arrange for me to give the speech or you will be joining the now dead."

Vlad only shook his head as he saw the insanity flowing through Danny's eyes.

His body began to shake as Danny lifted him into the air above his head with no effort. He closed his eyes, and Vlad saw a large burst of light, of energy. He screamed as he felt the heat and radiation from Danny's power blister every inch of his skin. The office was destroyed. Danny's blood had begun to drip down his neck and onto his white shirt, the blood sometimes missing the fabric and ending up on the floor of the office instead.

"Do you doubt me now? Or will I have to treat you the same way as all of my other... victims?"

He put a play on his words, not wanting to have his plans go ignored. He quickly dropped Vlad, the man having the air knocked out of him as he hit the ground. Danny seemed to tower over him while he was standing just next to Vlad, his foot suddenly making contact with Vlad's face, a nasty crunch telling that at least the nose broke, if not more. He felt Danny pulse energy into his left leg, the bones snapping and leaving his leg twisted backward.

Vlad screamed in pain as Danny did this to the other leg, the skin stretching beyond its elasticity and tearing around the joints. Vlad's cries of pain did not even make Danny flinch as he took to Vlad's midsection, removing the pancreas and the spleen, fusing them together into a puddle of mush over Vlad's face. He felt the acidic substances begin to burn through his flesh, white spots beginning to show themselves on his face as Danny watched with joy.

Danny quietly began to get high, his mind trying to decide what to do next. He began to pull the burning skin away from Vlad's muscles and phasing it into the bones, causing his body to look like it had been turned inside out. He formed his perfect fitting knives and began to cut away chunks of tissue, leaving a checkerboard pattern on red and white - tissue and bone - all across Vlad's so to be corpse. He quietly whispered to Vlad as he began to turn every internal organ into a soup and poured energy into him to keep him alive to feel the pain.

"Do you believe me now?"

The insanity in his eyes only showed Vlad that Danny was not responsible enough to be evil. He tried to open his mouth, but Danny had already begun to grab his tongue and force it down his throat, what was left of his body spasming from the choking that would never really happen until Danny had stopped forcing him to live. He gurgled a response as much as possible, but only got an eye roll and saw that Danny was high and most likely needed to be in a mental asylum.

Danny began to play around, not knowing what he wanted to do with Vlad's skull and brain yet, so he began to mix every internal organ around into a puddle, the soupy mixture on the edge of spilling onto the floor in the office with charred walls and ashes from the papers that had been in the room a few minutes before. He began talking to Vlad as the old man began to stop trying to talk.

"Well, Vlad. It seems I finally won, doesn't it? Yup, you have been destroyed by me, just like you should have been three years ago after you trapped me and my mom in the woods."

He stood himself up and began to pace the room, hoping to see fear fill Vlad's eyes.

"After all this time, who knew I would end up being the new ghost king? After all, I know you were after that position a few years ago, but the last king was too powerful for you to overrule. Wasn't he?"

The mocking voice Danny gave received death glares from Vlad as he lay on the floor dying. Danny decided to mess a bit with Vlad's brain before getting him out of the way.

"This never would have happened to you if you had just let me have my speech in a few hours."

Danny sat Vlad up against the desk, sealing a film of his energy to keep the organs in Vlad's midsection that he had sliced open and turned to soup. Danny made sure he was still choking on his tongue. He formed a small laser with his finger and cleanly removed the top of his skull, the gray brain matter resting underneath. As he saw the tissue, he picked up the entire brain, held it in front of Vlad, and then bit into it with his fangs, carving two holes in the organ which blood began to seep out of.

Vlad felt a tingling in all of his limbs as his body tried to give blood to his brain to keep from dying, but instead, all of his blood found an empty skull. The blood overflowed onto his face and down the back of his neck, filling his eyes and causing his vision to sting and be tinted red.

Danny let out a psychotic laugh as Vlad's eyes widened in fear. He felt his body beginning to go brain dead and die, falling over onto his side before Danny rolled him onto his back again and broke the ecto-film by placing the brain in the liquified organs. The fluid began to pour over the brim of Vlad's body, sinking into the floor and causing it to be sticky. Danny stood up and let Vlad suffer for a moment before pulling his energy from Vlad's body and letting him lie on the floor, finally dying after being tortured.

Vlad's last memories were the pain that he got for every nerve Danny had touched. His body was turned inside out, checkered with tissue and bone showing, had his blood and liquified organs flooding out of his body, and had his tongue down his throat choking him. He felt his lungs trying to scream in agony as the nerves fired pain from every cubic inch of his person.

The last thing he remembered hearing was a new evil laugh and Danny saying that he would be seeing Jack and Maddie in Hell.

Danny quickly walked over to Vlad's desk after he made a lasting impression on Vlad and his body turned to a corpse. He found the files in a small "ecto-proof" safe in the wall and forged all of Vlad's information and sent it to the secretary's office to advertise his speech in a city-wide announcement. He laughed as he heard them start the speech.

Danny rushed himself to his ghost form and back to human again and saw that his clothes were clean and his skin was bloodless. He looked like an innocent kid. His fangs had retracted and his eyes were their sky blue again. He phased himself back outside and wandered around the town for a bit. A quick look at his watch said it was three in the afternoon, so he had some time to kill, not just people.

Danny had returned to his usual state of being alright. Not needing to kill, but not high. He saw the Nasty Burger down the street and walked in to find every kid from school hanging out and laughing. He grabbed a booth on his own and got some food, quickly paying with cash he had swiped from Vlad.

Danny watched as the time passed, and saw all the teens begin to look at a public announcement on their phones. He overheard Dash and Paulina talking.

"Woah, Fentonio has a speech today at six. I wonder what that loser could even be talking about?"

"I don't know. But maybe, it'll be something that he and his lame girlfriend could connect over!"

Dash and Paulina laughed as they put their phones away, Danny feeling a growl rising in his throat.

"I'll show them... I'll show them all."

He quickly rose from his seat and began to leave when Paulina noticed him and had to announce his presence to every last person around them.

"Look, everybody! It's the suddenly important Danny Fenton. I wonder how much more Sam will fall for him after his lame and stupid speech tonight!"

Danny gave her a flash of his red eyes and turned, storming out the door. His watch said it was almost five-thirty and almost time for his speech. He began to jog back to City Hall, his heart pounding in excitement as he saw people gathering around the area, waiting to hear what he had to say. He ran back behind the building and let himself in.

5:49 PM.

Danny walked to the front of the building and sat down behind where the podium was. He quickly thought through his plan again, each portion making him want to smile even more than he already was. Danny became less nervous as the clock ticked down to his time to shine. He saw he only had a couple more minutes and stood himself behind the podium to look like he was getting ready.

He mentally counted down until six o'clock, and when he hit zero, looked back to see the secretary motion for him to start, giving a curious look as if asking where the mayor was.

Danny took in a deep breath to calm himself, his eyes closing for a minute and reopening, still blue. He heard nothing in the crowd and could have sworn he heard somebody drop a paperclip from the report papers they were holding.

He took a deep breath in to make sure he had enough air to start his speech.

"Citizens of Amity Park. I have big news for you."

Danny tilted his head down for a moment and closed his eyes. He lifted his head to reveal his red eyes and smiled to show off his new fangs.

Danny had to laugh as he heard screams from the crowd and saw several girls from his old school nearly pass out.

"It is time for your new ruler!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah. Bad place to end for sure. Sorry bout that. I've got a ton in store for the next few chapters, so please, stick with me. I'm gonna be updating again ASAP, which could be tomorrow (probably not) or next Tuesday. I'm seriously hoping that I can get a lot more done a lot sooner after this week since it's supposed to calm down for the rest of the summer.  
> Anyone able to find some puns in there, or at least, a lighter sense of humor in the darkest parts? I had to do it. I can't just write a story without a little poorly timed humor.  
> I'm expecting to get this work done before I have to move in August, so it should be updated pretty frequently. I am still taking side requests if anyone has any, and I can always use criticism to build on my work. Let me know if you have anything.  
> Got any questions (related to my works)? Feel free to ask them. I'm always happy to answer! Hope you've been enjoying, and super sorry for my long-winded messages!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	8. Declension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long since I updated this, I know. I've kinda been in and out of writer's block for how I wanted to write this chapter, and it took a lot longer than I expected. To those of you that have been waiting for this for who knows how long now, Thank You. For those of you who are reading this later, congrats, you missed my long wait time.  
> I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this chapter, especially since I'm pretty sure I just used it to get me into the next part of my story without the chapter being eight times longer than usual. I would feel stupid doing that so I tried to avoid it. I know this isn't my favorite chapter, but we're getting there.  
> I really hope that you all enjoy reading this, especially since I love writing it. I'm also working on a few one-shots and some other stories, so I'm hoping to have those up pretty soon too, and you can check them out once I have them typed out since it's just getting past the fact that I wrote them in a notebook while I was in class and couldn't type.  
> Seriously though, enjoy reading and I really hope to update this a lot quicker next time... but don't get mad if I don't. Good writing takes time!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

“What do we do now?”

Jeremy saw Maurice looking at him, holding his wife who had just passed out.

“There’s gotta be something we can do about this little vermin.”

Jeremy pressed his hand to his chin to think as deep as he could. The ghost boy was their kids’ friend, but now this was getting out of control. It seemed like he just kept killing - almost daily now. Jeremy knew that his family would be next if he didn’t do anything.

“I don’t know. Maybe take him to a mental hospital and get him checked?”

Maurice looked down at his wife seeing her limp and motionless. He laid her on the ground and went to catch Pamela, seeing that Jeremy was too far away to catch her in time.

“How are we supposed to get him under control enough to get him checked? Apparently Jazz, Tucker, and Sam were ghost hunters, and obviously, Jack and Maddie were, but now they’re all dead thanks to that annoying ghost kid.”

Jeremy stared at his wife as she got laid down and the men looked for a place to sit and talk where they wouldn’t be heard as their wives woke up. They took a seat across the street, seeing nobody in the neighborhood.

“If there aren’t any more ghost hunters, then what are we supposed to do?”

Maurice looked at Jeremy and sighed as he pulled out his phone.

“I guess we could see if there were any supposed ghost hunters from the towns next to us that we could hire?”

They sat there in pure silence as Maurice scrolled through his search engine, hoping to find somebody that could help them with this half human-half ghost teenager. If you could call him human at all anymore.

“Wait. That girl in red. She looks familiar.”

The men opened her page and saw that it was a girl from Amity Park.

“I guess that our kids and the Fentons weren’t the only ghost hunters in Amity Park like I thought.”

Jeremy nodded slowly, trying to think of what they could do to make her work for them, even if it meant getting killed.

They contacted her as fast as they could, looking up to see their wives beginning to stir. A short message saying that they were after the ghost boy brought her to them in just a couple minutes. They looked to see a girl, not much older than their kids had been when they were murdered, dressed in all red, her face hidden in a mask as she hovered above the ground on a jet sled.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?”

“We just want you to gain control of the ghost boy. He needs to be taken into a mental hospital. If you have to hurt him to get him under your control, do it. You’ll be paid handsomely.”

Jeremy took out his wallet, showing that he was rich. The girl silently nodded her head once to show that she would do it. Maurice grabbed her wrist when she started to fly away.

“Be careful though. He’s already on a killing spree and is extremely powerful. Last we knew he was at five murders in the past week.”

Jeremy felt the fear sink in for the girl. Her mind trying to decide if she was still going to hunt her worst enemy. Finally, he got a response from the girl in red.

“I’ll still do it. No other ghost has been able to beat me yet. He just always has an escape route because he’s afraid of me.”

The girl raced off, the men walking back over to their wives after losing sight of the girl.

Pamela grabbed Jeremy around the waist as he explained to her what had happened when she passed out. He stood silently for a while more and listened to Maurice do the same to Angela as he thought deeply.

“Let’s hope that she doesn’t end up getting killed too.”

. . .

Danny looked out over the crowd. His eyes were blazing red, his fangs on the brink of drawing blood. He saw the looks of panic in everyone’s eyes, saw that there were people passed out, on the edge of screaming, and some just waiting to see how he was going to explain his new look.

“You may know me as Danny Fenton, and you aren’t wrong. But you also aren’t right. You see me now. I hid my other half from you for almost four years. But I won’t do that any longer.”

Danny took another deep breath, running through his next sentence mentally to keep himself from screwing it up.

“My eyes and fangs are natural now. And while I was able to hide them before now, I won’t anymore. I am not just the human you know as Fenton. I am also the heroic ghost you know as Danny Phantom.”

He focused his core and allowed it to begin pulsing.

“I have been only half human, and only half ghost for four years. Recently, I have begun to kill off my human half, leaving me slightly more ghost than human - hence the red eyes and fangs being my natural features now.”

Danny heard a small voice shout to him. He looked the man in the eyes, his gaze almost sending ectoplasmic rays into the man’s skull.

“Say that to me again?”

“Prove you’re Danny Phantom!”

“Heh, figured you guys wouldn’t believe me.”

Danny forced his body to become his ghost form, feeling much more natural as he floated just above the ground in his black outfit.

“I am Danny Phantom! I am also done being the hero when you obviously don’t need one. You all take medication from my parents filled with substances that doctors trust and that prevent you from being hurt by ghosts. I am no longer needed to protect you from the other ghosts.”

Danny gave himself a breather and figured it was time for a dramatic pause.

“However, after four years of ghost fighting, there’s only so much lack of pain a ghost just like myself can handle. I have been having myself destroyed by other ghosts while you all stay safe, been going through emotional, mental, and physical pain for four years. Pain that none of you will understand. Never will.”

Danny heard whispers going around in the crowd and had his hair hide his eyes except for the red glow they reflected onto his hair.

“That being said, there are six of you who I know will be the closest to knowing it. Miss Sam Manson. Mr. Tucker Foley. Miss Jazz Fenton. Mrs. Maddie Fenton. Mr. Jack Fenton. Mr. Vlad Masters/Plasmius.”

The names rang out around Danny as he heard the whispering cease.

“I have killed each of these humans. And for those of you who didn’t know, your mayor was also half ghost. He was the Vlad Plasmius I fought here infinite times. He was my immortal enemy, but now… oh, I’m much darker than he was.”

Danny laughed a bit as he heard himself. His voice had begun to drop in his laugh, which made a dark smile cross his face.

“I have given up my good side and have decided to do the thing that has been plucking at my brain since I killed Sam. I’m going to take over all of you. I have become the king of the Ghost Zone. This means I will become the king of Amity Park, possibly the world, since that world is the flip-side of your world.”

Danny looked up a bit more.

“I have found that humans are stupider than I thought, as my ‘parents’ never figured out that I was half ghost. The kids and teachers at school never realized that it was why I was never in school. The town knew my name but couldn’t put two teens in the same person. I have done everything for you guys to protect you, having minimal ways to transform myself without giving away my secret identity.”

Danny let red energy flow off of his body in pulses.

“But now that you know I am the ghost boy, you all will get some news thrown at you. Anyone who tries to oppose me, to defeat me, to hunt me, to capture me, or to take control of me will face the painful consequences like my so-called family did.”

He held his hand out to the crowd, the energy beginning to burn the podium he was standing behind.

“I even have an example for you all to watch.”

Red energy flowed around his target, a large beam of the hot power bringing him closer to the front, even with the culprit fighting against it. The town heard a psychotic laugh leave Danny’s mouth as the victim was pulled up to the stage, just inches from Danny, his energy paralyzing the human in a stance of fear.

“Watch and learn what I can do to you should you try to bring me down!”

Danny took his free and formed a new dagger, the blade sharp, the handle perfectly smooth and fitting to his hand as he raised it above his head.

A long slash down the young man’s face began to well with blood. His skin began to blister, his eyes pinched shut in pain. Danny punched him in the stomach, the esophagus beginning to protrude from the mouth.

“Kwan! No!”

Danny turned, his eyes blazing their signature red.

“Dash, it's time for you to see what I can do. It’s your turn to fear me.”

Danny felt his energy surge. He pulled at the esophagus and yanked the entire digestive system from Kwan’s body. The red blood began to drop down his face. A smile grew, revealing Danny’s fangs as he poured life into Kwan so he would feel the pain.

He looked out over the citizens of the town, seeing that they were unable to look away from him. Danny had figured he would have to force them to watch. He dropped Kwan to his hands and knees, forming another blade to hit with.

The head was stabbed harshly, the blade being left in the skull, down to the end of the blade - the brain obviously punctured. Danny formed another knife and waved it at Kwan, who was beginning to pull himself up to his knees. As he raised his head, Danny forced a knife through each eye, fluid spilling down Kwan’s face as he screamed in pain.

A deafening shriek filled the air as Danny sent a single ghost ray to snap Kwan’s spine, another to gain access to his chest. Danny burnt through the skin, revealing a destroyed heart and lungs. He pulled the lungs and peeled them like an onion, leaving the pieces scattered on the ground.

Danny grabbed the heart and felt it crumbling from being charred and dried out by the heat. He threw the pieces into the crowd, screams ringing out as a friend’s heart rained upon the innocent beings. Danny laughed, even more, his body beginning to glow even brighter.

“Please, just kill me already…”

Kwan croaked as he began crawling towards Danny and facing the crowd. He heard some woman faint as she saw the two daggers in the eye sockets, blisters beginning to form and break rapidly in and around the actual eye. Fluid from the blisters caked Kwan’s cheeks and sealed the blades into his eyes.

“You’ll die when I’m ready.”

Danny whispered loud enough that Kwan could hear him before announcing to the whole town that he was all powerful.

“As you can see, not even the people who think they’re stronger than me can beat me. I am the ghost king, and I am unstoppable.”

Danny lit one of his fingers with a small red flame, angling towards Kwan’s body. He howled in agony as his body began to burn and shrivel up. Danny continued to pour energy into the body, the screams never ceasing, the life never ending in the body.

Kwan’s entire body had begun to shrink, the smell of burning hair and flesh fresh in the air. A breeze took it out to the people, some of them covering their mouths as they were nauseated by the stench in the air.

“Why are you doing this?”

Danny heard a little girl scream from the crowd as she covered her nose to try and block the smell that had rushed at her with the wind.

“Because, Child. I am all-powerful, and this is to show all of you who didn’t know that.”

Danny turned back to Kwan, the fire beginning to run out of fuel. He snapped his fingers and the energy left Kwan’s body, his dying look being a horror to the crowd as dagger handles continued to protrude from his eye sockets, the fluid from the eyeballs burning a different color than the skin and still flaming on his cheeks.

Danny bent over the body and stepped on the flames, the skull disintegrating under the weight of his foot. He saw a lady cover her daughter’s eyes as Danny did so. He heard a few cries from the other teens that had been best friends with Kwan. He heard them whispering softly to each other, his ghost powers enhancing his hearing.

“How could we not have known it was Fenton?”

“Was it our fault he became this… this… this monster?”

“Could we have stopped him from being evil?”

“Why did he become this freak in the first place?”

“Had he not been such a nerd, we wouldn’t have had to bully him.”

“I will never be able to wrap my mind around Paulina Fenton.”

Danny felt himself smile as he heard them talking, blaming themselves for his choices. He had become this “monster” by choice. And while they may have helped him decide to become this, while they may have been one of the causes, it was not them who made Danny who he was. He almost wanted to laugh out loud as he saw them look up at him, his feet beginning to step onto Kwan’s body, disintegrating the remains of the young body. He felt his body begin to hum as he began to address the public again.

“You will make me the ruler of your pathetic human town, or what’s happened to everybody else I’ve killed with happen to you. One by one until you change your mind.”

His eyes gleamed red as he heard whispers.

“And I am not afraid to kill the elderly, women, or children.”

Danny felt his hands begin to shake, his mind screaming that he needed another kill. He quickly finished his speech to keep from killing everybody before he was in control.

“You have been warned.”

With that, Danny yanked his body to turn and fly off at his insane speeds, hearing his threat echo around him as he passed through it, the sound following behind him as he raced for a place where he could force himself to stay, never moving until he was able to think properly again. He felt his body begging him to move, to find a new victim, to kill. But Danny forced himself to land in his house, his feet dragging across the torn up floors as he made his way to where he slept.

Danny wanted to pass out then and there, but he knew he had a bit of work to do first. He silently called for the cloaked ghosts to come and assist him. They quickly showed up in front of him as he leaned against the wall.

“I need you to get rid of this… this murder problem before I take out the whole town and ruin my chances of being king here too.”

The ghosts only nodded to him, not giving him an answer.

“Hello? Are you gonna help me or not? I’ve already asked nicely.”

Danny’s eyes flashed brighter as he returned himself to human, his body unable to remain standing. He saw the ghosts walking towards him and felt his eyes close as they placed their hands on his shoulder, passing out from the power they were pouring into him and lack of sleep.

. . .

Danny found himself awake again in his dreams, the ghosts circled around him as he floated in an empty realm. He felt the air around him become a rigid cold, even while he was a ghost. Danny looked around himself and tried to see how many of the cloaked ghosts were around him in his dream.

“You don’t seem to understand that we are helping you.”

The voices echoed in Danny’s head.

“You have taken advantage of your power, have begun to once again lose control of your love of killing because it will give you more power.”

Danny looked at the ghosts in confusion, several thoughts running through his head.

“How does that make any sense? I used it to prove my point. That I’m not afraid of them, they should be afraid of me.”

The ghosts stepped closer to him as he turned himself to see what was behind him. He was expecting to find the memories like before, but instead saw another group of ghosts. It looked like all of the ghosts he had fought for years before he decided to become even eviler than them.

“What are you doing?”

Danny saw a smile form on Skulker’s face, a look of hatred fill his eyes.

“What we should have done weeks ago.”

The ghosts floated closer to Danny. He took a few steps back, his voice shaking as he saw them getting closer.

“I’m not scared of you, ya know.”

He couldn’t make his voice sound brave at all. Anxiety filled his body as he realized he had never fought against so many ghosts at the same time. He felt himself run into the cloaked ghosts, a painful shock surging through his body as they continued to pour more energy and power into him than his body could control.

Danny began to scream, both in pain and terror as he was unable to move any further.

Suddenly, he saw the other ghosts stop, the shock subsiding as the ghosts all gather around him, pull out chairs and sit down. Danny stood himself up and looked at the ghosts. He heard one from the back call out,

“This is an intervention.”

Danny started laughing as the ghosts threw him a chair to sit in, telling him to join them for small talk. They motioned for him to do as they asked as he stood there laughing.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m fine. Totally in control of myself.”

Danny rolled his eyes at the ghosts, each time the ghosts looked at him his patience getting thinner.

“You obviously don’t.”

Ember pulled out a file for her nails and began to take care of that rather than keep talking. Skulker looked at her before finishing her thoughts.

“You kill for no reason other than self-pleasure, not even for power or to scare the humans. You kill for that high feeling.”

Danny turned away, his hands throwing the chair to the ground.

“Pfft, that’s a lie.”

“Do we need to show you, Dipstick?”

Ember snapped her fingers and Technus pulled up a screen with recordings for Danny to watch. He watched himself begin to kill, each of the people in order. Sam, Jazz, Tucker, his Dad, his Mom, Vlad, Kwan. Each one became more of a game for him, he wasn’t afraid of killing like he was before he tried to do it to make his point clear.

“You see, ghost child?”

Skulker pressed the off button on the screen and turned back to Danny.

“You obviously have a problem. And so long as you are evil like us, we are willing to help you out of this problem, especially since if you keep murdering these humans, there will be nobody left for us to scare.”

Danny felt his mouth begin to open, only to close. His whole body was already starting to shake from his lack of murder, and it had only been a few hours. He began to realize what the ghosts were saying. As little as he liked to admit it, his addiction had grown out of control.

“Fine. Fine, you’re right. I need help. But this doesn’t make me any weaker. In fact, it will make me much more powerful than all of you since trying to get rid of addictions like this would kill most people.”

A psychotic laugh erupted from his chest as he began trying to keep his high power with the other ghosts while they were helping him heal himself.

“You will never be more powerful than me. Never! You would never survive this, but I will.”

Danny kept laughing until he broke down into tears, his body violently shaking from his withdrawal.

“Oh boy, this is worse than we thought.”

Skulker looked to the other ghosts and saw none of them moving to help Danny as he continued to quiver on the floor, his sobs becoming silent and rapid.

Danny had so many thoughts flying through his mind that he couldn't focus on just one. He tried to stand himself up but collapsed and hit his head against the metal of Skulker's boots, a loud "thud" being heard by every ghost around. Some even flinched, just from hearing the bang.

Skulker picked Danny up and pulsed his own control energy into him. Danny felt the energy pouring into his body, relieving him from his withdrawal symptoms and his lack of control.

"That ought to keep you from killing and from having side effects until tomorrow when we come to see you in person. But until then, get some sleep. We can't have you collapsing on us, our ruler."

As Skulker put him down, Danny looked at him in shock as he heard his title.

"Why did you call me that? I thought none of you were even slightly afraid of me?"

Danny's head tilted a bit as he questioned the other ghosts. He only received a laugh as a response for a minute before hearing another ghost that he hadn't met before answer him.

"Because you're the king of the Ghost Zone. And of course, we fear you, you're much more powerful than us. We only agreed to try and help you because you have the position of the king, and we have to help him if the cloaked ghosts request it. Otherwise, you could have our heads."

Danny only began to laugh at the thought of having their heads. He quickly changed to a nervous laugh as he saw the ghosts were looking at him seriously.

"You guys are kidding, right?"

He saw heads shake.

"Oh come on! I wouldn't take your heads."

His eyes flashed brighter and an evil tone settled in his voice.

"I would destroy your whole being."

Danny saw the ghosts flinch and begin to back away in fear. He saw them trying to avoid eye contact with him. Even the ghosts he had fought with for so long and that he feared.

"We will be with you tomorrow in person, whelp. I mean, Sir."

Skulker bowed his head and the other ghosts hit their knees. Danny only looked at them funny as he awkwardly began his trip back to his dream world to try and avoid killing more people. He heard the cloaked ghosts following behind him.

"You see that your problem has gotten worse than we ever expected. We have never had to get help for another king."

Danny brushed it off as he felt his body begin to grow so tired he could barely move.

"Whatever guys, I'm getting it under control. Besides, I need sleep. One thing about still having any humanity in me is that I can get exhausted. Come talk to me tomorrow after I'm not about to pass out."

The ghosts exchanged glances and disappeared. Danny saw an empty blackness and took it as rest. No dreams, no interruptions. 

Danny woke his body from the state of sleep that he was in to check for a few things before really sleeping that night. He made sure that everything was dark around him and that his body had returned to his human form. He looked around and saw nothing to disturb him before closing his eyes once again and allowing himself to sleep.

Danny was out cold in a few seconds. Before morning came, he heard something in the bushes outside but assumed it to be an animal and fell back asleep.

. . .

Danny heard a loud crash as he was getting up. His body quickly fell into defense mode, ready to fight whatever was coming towards him. He stood himself up and looked around. A small flash of red fabric was seen trying to get through the window, where the boards blocking it were now broken.

"That must have been what caused the noise"

Danny took a few steps closer to the window and saw a frequent enemy for his ghost portion, a good friend of his human's. He saw a few burns on the wood, showing it had been blasted by the equipment that Valerie used all the time. As she made it into the house and began to stand up Danny just crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her, one eyebrow raising itself in the process.

"Val."

The girl jumped in fear of him seeing her, her sneak lost to him.

"Look, Fenton, Phantom, whatever you are. I'm finally gonna win and I'm gonna do exactly as I was told."

Danny just smirked at her, his eyes beginning to darken to a deeper shade of red. He forced his fangs to reveal themselves and took a few steps closer to Valerie. She took a few steps back.

"You're never going to beat me."

"I heard your speech yesterday. I know I can beat you!"

Danny gave off an evil laugh, his hands begging him to just kill her already. He forced himself to listen to her, his smile widening as he waited for her to make the first move.

"Prove it. Or die trying."

Danny gestured to himself, waiting for Valerie to come after him. All she pulled out was a couple of guns. One ectoblaster, and one regular handgun from the humans.

Danny's eyes widened as he saw her fire both of them at once. He had no way to avoid either of the shots, both of them capable of hurting him depending on his form at the time. She had cornered him without him knowing that. Him thinking he had more than enough power to defeat and/or kill her was making him lose his focus. 

"Stupid, stupid!"

Danny felt the bullets hit him in the upper chest and in his shoulder. His power had failed him. Danny crashed to the ground on his knees, about to wail so hard the entire town collapsed as red and green blood ran down his body. Valerie took a deep breath and held out a thermos, her breathing hard and unsteady.

"I told you. I told you I would finally win. I can't believe I dated you for a while. That you turned into this monster."

Danny felt tears in his eyes as Valerie began to turn the thermos on.

"You're a freak just like both worlds said."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said. Not my favorite chapter... But it's my gateway into my next part which I have a basic outline written for and will hopefully have it typed a lot quicker. I'm also just getting ready for a new work that could be quite a long journey to read. I'm seriously hoping to have that started really soon, and it's gonna be really cool to type.  
> I'm always looking for requests, ideas, comments, and even ways to make my writing more fun to read! If you've got anything, feel free to let me know. I'm always looking for new stuff to write, and since I've got this summer to just hang out at home, I should get more writing done. I hope you keep reading this, and I've got a lot more coming for you all!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	9. Labefaction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been too long. At least, in my opinion, it's been too long since I've updated this story. And I know I haven't uploaded any of my other works yet. But I'm getting there. So this chapter was really hard for me to write just because I didn't want it to get boring because I have been promising to do a bit more exciting work. But it's done! Yay!  
> So, on another note, I am looking for some help editing the description for this work. I wasn't POSITIVE as to where it was going when I started writing it, but since I am now, these chapters are just paving the way to where I want it to go, and I want YOUR help to write a brief overall description without any spoilers so that I can actually do something besides use the most basic text from THE FIRST CHAPTER as my description before you click on this to read it. I'm gonna be seeing who's I get and who's I like in the next couple weeks, so just message me or whatever (My tumblr is in my profile, but if you're lazy like me, I'll put it here too. You can reach me at http://phantomgirl15.tumblr.com/ ) if you'd like to lend me a helping hand because I am very bad with making stuff sound interesting, without giving spoilers. I'd seriously love it if you guys would help me to help you enjoy this work. I'm honestly pretty sure I've been trying to change the description since I made this, and I've never really been happy with it and I've kinda been thinking about that almost as much as I have about typing more of the chapters. We're gonna see just how much better we can make this work thanks to you guys, the readers!  
> I know I blab a lot, but just a couple more updates and then the chapters will go on;  
> I am going to be a bit busy in the next couple of weeks and will be trying to post more chapters, but don't be alarmed if I don't. I'm also going to be working on a few more works at the same time, so keep your eyes open for that. Some of them may be one-shots, some may be a few chapters, and now you can know that I'm already in the middle of working on a really cool work with my best friend, which we are hoping to have the start to (or all of (lol probably not since it's taking a lot of time to get one chapter done)) uploaded before mid-August.  
> Finally, I am working on upgrading my writing so that not all of my stories are just slightly different plots. I'm also hoping to start working on some crossovers just after I finish another few works that I don't have up yet or after this one.
> 
> Thank you for putting up with my wordy notes, and please enjoy reading this chapter!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Valerie heard the boards covering the window breaking open, the wood splintering as it burnt in bright orange flames. Her blaster's recoil had thrown her backward into the bushes, her face being scratched by the overgrown branches. Valerie tried to get herself up, not seeing the movement from in the building. Her arms pushed her through the window backward, almost positive that she was still unseen.

"Val."

She felt her entire body flinch, her heart beginning to race. Danny knew she was there, and she couldn't go back now. She slowly turned herself to face him, seeing him give her a blank face with his arms lightly crossed.

"Look, Fenton, Phantom, whatever you are. I'm finally gonna win and I'm gonna do exactly as I was told."

Valerie threw her arms to her sides, her hands clenching into tight fists. As she thought back to Tucker and Sam's parents she saw Danny give her nothing but a smirk. His smile had gone from its usual kindness to an inner evil that nobody ever expected. She felt her heart skip a beat as she saw that this was who she had called a friend for several years.

"You're never going to beat me."

Valerie held her hands in the tight fists, taking one step backward to keep herself from falling as she saw his eyes change color - to a deeper red - and fangs showing themselves on his bottom lip. Her eyes widened as she saw they were real. Her body forced her to act like she wasn't scared, her head mentally shaking to try and pull her out of shock.

"I heard your speech yesterday. I know I can beat you!"

Valerie began to walk towards him, his body moving very slightly as she waited to see what he would do as she got closer. One step. Two steps. Just a little farther and he'll be back in the corner of the room.

Valerie heard an evil laugh echo around her, chills sent down her spine. She could see his hands quivering at his sides now, his smile being nothing like it had been.

"Prove it. Or die trying."

Valerie listened and felt her heart stop for a moment as she heard him talking. His light joking had become malevolent, so dark that she knew nobody could bring back the original Danny. She saw him motion to himself, just waiting for her to make the first move. Slowly she pulled out her guns. One that was her Dad's, and one from the Fentons.

Valerie saw Danny's eyes widen as she fired both guns at once, not even sure if it was going to work. When Danny couldn't make himself move, she knew she had won. She heard him screaming to himself that he was stupid.

It was almost as if time had slowed down. She saw the bullets hit Danny, red and green blood beginning to run down his chest as he fell to his knees, trying to make the blood stop flowing. Valerie forced herself to pull out a Fenton Thermos that she had swiped and kept with her, her breathing beginning to get hard. She felt as though someone was trying to strangle her as she held the thermos out to capture Danny.

"I told you. I told you I would finally win. I can't believe I dated you for a while. That you turned into this monster."

Valerie began to turn the thermos on, she saw that Danny's eyes had filled with water, the shine on them being fear and liquid rather than the evil from the past few days.

"You're a freak just like both worlds said."

Valerie heard an angry and pained scream as she sucked Danny into the thermos. His body tried to escape the pull but it didn't work. He was sucked back into the stream each time he tried to get out. Finally, he was gone, his body trapped in a small metal tube.

Valerie felt herself collapse onto the floor, tears beginning to stream down her face.

"I finally did it. I took out Phantom. I won."

Valerie held the thermos to her chest as she sat there for a moment. Her body felt like it was about to fall apart. Her head was spinning and her arms were shaking. Valerie tried to push herself up off the ground but felt her arms give out as she fell. She had to use her knees to get herself up, her ankles almost wanting to collapse. Valerie forced herself back outside, cradling the thermos as she took her jet sled into the air and began to call the adults who hired her on her Bluetooth headset so she could focus on not running into a building.

"Mr. Manson?"

She heard two women talking in the background as she kept flying. The other man was told to hold on while the phone was put on speaker.

"I captured the gh... I caught Danny."

Valerie heard her own voice sink, knowing that she was holding someone who had been her friend, but had been through so much, he had to change himself. And there was no way to fix those problems now.

Valerie heard a sigh of relief as she waited for the adults to answer her. She felt the hair on her neck beginning to stand up from the silence she was hearing.

"Take him to the hospital and wait outside the front doors. We'll meet you there, we're on our way."

Valerie heard the phone call end and turned herself around to fly towards the hospital. She felt what she assumed to be an angry, violent shaking from the thermos, Danny obviously mad about being caught. She saw that she was on the wrong side of town and began to fly faster.

Valerie landed outside the hospital and waited, keeping her suit on to try and keep her identity secret. She saw a car pulling up beside the building, the four adults getting out of the car, one couple in the front, one couple in the back. She saw Tucker's dad toss the keys to the valet parking staff and run up to her as fast as he could.

"He's in here."

Valerie held up the thermos and answered the question she knew would be coming before it was even asked. She looked away from Maurice's eyes as he tried to take the thermos from her.

"I can't let you do that. You don't know how to work these and could get hurt once he's out of it."

Valerie made extreme eye contact with Maurice as he started to disagree with her.

"I'm going with you."

Maurice looked at her and gave her a weird glance. She saw the other three adults coming up behind him and heard one of the women ask what was wrong. Maurice gave her the answer.

"Guys, you don't know what you're getting into. He hasn't fought you before."

Valerie ripped off her mask without even knowing it, the fabric almost refusing to let her breathe like it normally did.

"Valerie?"

Angela walked up to her and placed a hand on her face. She saw the cuts from the wood on her cheeks and the tear stains from when she was breaking down.

"Valerie, what are you doing hunting ghosts?"

Valerie didn't know what to say. Her mind raced, her heart fluttered, her breathing became shallow, and her grip on the thermos became tighter.

"I needed money. And I think part of it was the same reason Danny did it... but then I just needed revenge on ghosts for ruining my life and... you're not gonna tell my dad, are you?"

Angela looked to her husband and then looked back to Valerie. Valerie saw the kindness in her eyes as she didn't try to take the thermos as her husband had.

"No. That's your responsibility. And you're extremely responsible. We need your help to get Danny back to normal. Come on!"

Valerie followed Angela in shock as she was invited to help take Danny into the hospital, not one person questioning the thermos she was holding. Valerie reached the front desk and rang the small bell on the counter to ask for help. A small older woman walked up and asked what she needed. Valerie bit her lip as she tried to decide what to say.

"Whoever it is the Fenton's see, I'm here for them to see Danny Fenton."

Valerie held up the thermos to show that she was holding Danny, her fingers gripping it so tightly she thought she would puncture the metal. But the nurses' mouth fell open, already shocked that the now known ghost boy had been captured, but now they were bringing him to the hospital.

"I'll call the doctor right away."

The nurse spun and picked up the phone while another quickly rushed the group into a new room to await the doctor's arrival. A tall man in a white lab coat came walking in, and Valerie assumed he was the doctor. He asked what was up and the adults began asking that he find something wrong with Danny to fix it.

"Woah woah woah. Slow down there. Danny Fenton, you said? As in the one who gave the speech yesterday about being half ghost?"

"Yeah, that's the guy."

The doctor was jotting down notes.

"And how exactly did you get him into a metal tube?"

Valerie blushed, trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.

"I shot him twice, at the same time really. With an ecto-gun and a small handheld that my dad trained me to use for our neighborhood. One that can hurt ghosts, one that hurts humans. Then I stuck him in the Fenton Thermos... its a ghost-catching device his parents made."

Valerie set it on the counter next to the doctor. He stared at it with his brown eyes behind his glasses.

"And is he hurt?"

"Majorly bleeding. Two shot wounds, duh."

Valerie rolled her eyes at the doctor as he began to take down more notes.

"I'll have to patch up the gunshot wounds before we can do any mental work on him. Grab your device we'll take him to the ghost lab."

Valerie picked up the thermos and followed the doctor into the lab, the adults on her heels. She was expecting a dark black room, but it was a brighter white than all of the regular operating rooms Valerie had seen for the humans. Her mouth dropped in shock that they had so much dedicated to helping ghosts.

"I'll need you to give me that thermos."

Valerie was in shock and handed the thermos to the doctor, her eyes never leaving the cylindrical tube of metal as the doctor raised an exam table with what looked to be metal cuffs in the table to hold somebody down.

"I'm getting ready to release in 3... 2... 1..."

. . .

Danny screamed in pain as he felt himself be forced from the Fenton Thermos as a human and bent much more than he knew his human body was capable of. He had to close his eyes for a moment to avoid the feeling of his head spinning getting worse from the amount of light he was surrounded by. He saw nothing but white in the few seconds he had his eyes open.

After finally being able to open his eyes without the room spinning, Danny saw nothing but blurry figures running around him in all directions. Some towards him, others away from him, some to the left, a couple to the right. He felt himself coming back together after being stuck in the Fenton Thermos, his mind reassembling what happened to him in the past few hours.

"Valerie."

Danny reached his hand out towards who he assumed was her, red energy swallowing his hand and halfway up his forearm. He saw a red figure move away from him as he charged the energy, starting to fade to a deeper red. He saw somebody in a white lab coat holding a small device, a few buttons on it.

"I'm sorry Danny, but it's time for you to return to your regular state."

Danny's vision began to clean up, and he saw that he was in an operating room with a doctor, Valerie, and Sam and Tucker's parents. He felt his hands begin to rise from where they had been resting at his sides, landing themselves against the neck of Sam's mom. He felt himself beginning to tighten his grip as he naturally began trying to strangle Pamela, who began screaming so loud nothing else could be heard.

Danny suddenly felt something in each of his shoulders that was pinching the nerves in his hands so that his fingers couldn't move when he told them to. His hands had gone numb.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Danny turned his upper body to the doctor who was throwing away small needles, and Valerie who was holding the small device.

"We..."

"Don't."

Danny cut the doctor off as he tried to explain what was going on. He saw Pamela rubbing at her throat where his hands had been and gave an evil laugh to himself for a moment before standing up and stretching on the table.

"I don't really care what you're doing unless it's letting me get rid of the people I can't stand. Which, I'm guessing you aren't so I'll just be on my way."

Danny began to float himself away from the room, only to be stopped by a ghost shield. He rubbed at his head as he felt himself be zapped by the shield and sent back down to sitting on the table in pain. He saw the smug grin on the doctor's face as he realized that he was trapped.

"Don't you dare make me burn this hospital to the ground."

Danny's eyes flashed a bright shade of blood red that matched perfectly with the blood running down his chest. He saw Valerie press a small button on the remote and heard a few chains loosen. He turned himself to see the auto capture chains his parents had invented to hold a ghost to the table to be examined.

Danny felt every muscle in his body begin to tense up as they came for his ankles and his wrists before trying to yank him back down.

"You think you can hold me down?"

Danny was on his knees, his strength letting him pull his upper body farther away from the table.

"You have no idea how strong I am. You can't beat me!"

Danny heard himself screaming as the chains began to pull harder. He felt his muscles beginning to give out, running out of energy from his blood loss. Even with his ectoplasm causing him to make new blood faster than a regular human, it wasn't enough. He heard the doctor talking to the adults as he felt his body giving out, his muscles refusing to do what he told them to. Valerie almost looked sorry for him as he gave her his crimson stare and drew more blood with his fangs.

"It says in his file that his human blood type is O-positive... Would you like me to transfer blood if need be?"

Valerie nodded her head so that the parents could see her and they agreed. Danny just glared at her as he felt his wounds beginning to heal, his blood flow beginning to lighten.

"You can't keep me here Valerie. I'm much stronger than you. So you had the surprise attack that first time. I can't lose."

He saw Valerie move uneasily. Her fingers telling the chains to tighten so much that Danny couldn't move his wrists or ankles at all.

"I'm sorry."

She began to walk towards him and placed her elbows on the high table.

"What's it like, to know that you can't be with people who love you for you? To know that this whole town will probably be dead before you can take over it."

"How do you know about..."

"I'd wanna be dead rather than be ruled by you. I'd be surprised if anyone thinks anything different."

Valerie looked to Danny as his voice filled with anger, his hands beginning to break loose from the numbing and clench into fists. He saw the looks of horror on the adults' faces as the doctor had to go and make sure he was being held with the ecto-proof chains as he laid there. Valerie took a step backward, which Danny took as a sign of fear.

He began to laugh, only for it to break into a bloody cough, red and green speckling the ceiling above Danny. He felt his head roll back as he stopped coughing, extreme burning running down his throat from the pained reflex to clear his throat. He already knew it was just trying to clear the blood.

The doctor began to look at the two holes in Danny's top half, each one having less width than it had before. Danny screamed as the doctor stuck his fingers into the wounds, pulling the bullet out of one, and remembering that there was nothing in the wound in the second one, but only after he had already caused Danny pain. He saw that the kid was on the edge of wanting to hurt him in return.

"I would have been fine without you. Why am I even here?"

The anger in his voice scared everyone in the room, his eyes glaring at each person as they went around the room. He saw Sam's dad biting at his fingernails, his face already nervous when he decided to try and explain.

"We... We wanted to get you some help. You might have killed our kids, or our friends, or some people who we knew, but we knew you needed mental help."

Danny heard what they said and felt his heartbeat rise. He was stuck, and they were going to try to return him to the pathetic, weak, loser he had been before - even though he was still half ghost.

He felt his body begin to pull at the chains, his wrists starting to succeed when he was yanked back down, the force being too much, even with his superhuman strength. He felt his head collide with the table, a sickening thud echoing through the room. Valerie looked upset that he was trying to get out.

"You guys are so stupid! I like being like this. I like having this much power, this much control. I enjoy being this version of me. I have embraced the enemy within, and you can't make me change."

Danny felt his eyes flash a darker red and his fangs slid a bit farther, his lip being pierced even further. Danny felt a small growl rising in his throat just from his anger. He saw the adults begin to try and slip away, obviously in fear. He couldn't tell if it was the noise coming from his throat or if it was how he looked, but he saw that they were scared and that was all that mattered.

"You think you can hold me? Don't make me ghostly wail my way out of here."

Valerie looked at him in shock and Danny only laughed.

"I've been able to get out of here for a while. You think you're winning? No. You're not. I'm much more powerful than you know."

A sly grin crossed Danny's face as he quit laughing. His body was shaking, obviously being forced to not do something. He felt his brain begin to beg to kill, his idea being that if they could keep him from killing now, the addiction would be gone. He wouldn't have to do it, no matter how badly he wanted to. He felt his body begin to pull against the chains, only for the doctor to press him back down against the table.

"Sorry kid, but no more evil ghosts in this town."

Danny looked at the doctor in pure shock.

"You called me a kid? I could kill you in three minutes if I wanted to."

He looked away from the doctor.

"Besides, you don't know how to take care of a human and ghost hybrid. I'm so much more different from you."

His human body had made rings around his midsection, just getting ready to change back into his ghost form. He tried to make the rings move, and they did, but when they got to his chest and his knees, they disappeared and he remained human. Danny had begun to scream in pure agony, the humans covering their ears from the volume, confused looks crossing their faces.

"What's happening?"

Valerie yelled out to the doctor. She only got a small shrug as he turned himself back to Danny.

They saw him in extreme pain, his eyes shut so tightly the doctor couldn't pry them open with his fingers. Danny felt himself beginning to melt on the inside, his body gaining heat from whatever was happening. He felt his power leaving him rapidly. Before he knew it, he felt electrical shock surging through his body in an alarming amount. The lights began to flicker, the room switching between light and dark.

The room went black, Danny still screaming in pain. His back began to arch off the table, and in the dark, the electric energy could be seen flowing through his body, making arches between his spine and the table and running through his limbs and chest.

Everything was glowing an eerie shade of green, and the building began to shake. Danny's body was giving off red energy in a brightly glowing aura. The shelving units on the wall began to fall, the doctor having to move everyone away from anything that would fall.

Danny felt his back trying to push farther away from the table, his flexibility being pushed as the pain shot through his body. He felt his power draining out of him, he was losing what he knew he had earned. His screams became louder and the electricity began to arc from his body to anything metal around him, but it didn't make the pain any less.

Danny felt the pain worsen, his body wanting to give out. He no longer had his power, his body was growing weak. Yet the muscle spasms and electricity forced him to remain in pain rather than just passing out. He saw the doctor telling the five others to get out of the room, leaving himself in there with Danny. He heard Valerie refuse, but get shoved out the door as the doctor came towards him. He tried to press a random button to see if it would stop, but Danny only felt his back begin to arch again as he laid on the now hot table.

He felt his body begin to get fried, his ghost portion beginning to melt from the inside, his core becoming unstable and on the brink of destruction. He felt the entire hospital shaking, felt his ghost bottling up inside of him like it was about to explode from his body. He felt his eyes trying to roll back into his head as the doctor called the front desk and told them to get everyone out of the hospital and to the next block.

Danny continued to scream when his lungs would refill themselves, he felt his body beginning to tear away from the ghost inside of him. The doctor looked at him and saw that something was majorly wrong. Danny felt the anger in his chest rise as his spine touched the table again, knowing that this was the doctor's fault. And partially Valerie's.

"This can't be happening to me!"

Danny screamed as he felt himself trying to keep his head from moving in an unnatural pattern. He heard a set of alarms go off, the lights beginning to flicker violently just like they had earlier. The electric shocks continued to fly from his body, the red aura growing deeper. He felt his body on the brink of being destroyed by whatever was pulsing inside of him.

The doctor yelped in shock as pieces of the walls began to crumble around him. Danny only watched in terror, his heart beating so rapid he thought it was about to burst.

"This can't be how I die."

The doctor tried to figure out what was going on, realizing that it wasn't the chains to the table doing it as he thought. The power was out, it would have stopped by now. He saw a small blade protruding from Danny's back as his spine once again arched, the electricity getting worse. He saw Valerie trying to get back in the room and let her in.

"Did you shoot that thing into his body?"

"It's the ecto-gun. I didn't know it formed those after the shot."

Danny heard that it was the ecto-gun and knew it was one that his parents had sold. He knew this blaster had the ability to completely fry a ghost until it was unstable and fell apart. He knew his parents had made it, so there was something wrong because even though he felt the effects, nothing was happening. All the gun did was cause him pain.

"You did this to me?"

Anger filled his voice rather than the fear and pain he had been feeling.

"Nobody can take me down! Nobody!"

Danny began to scream, his red aura glowing even brighter. So bright that the doctor and Valerie had to shield their eyes.

"Especially not some death deserving little girl."

His back rested back on the table, the lights still flickering, the shaking of the building getting worse. Danny felt the chains around his wrists break from the power that he was giving off, but his muscles refused to let him move. His scream got worse until it was deafening, even while Valerie and the doctor had their hands over their ears. Before he knew what was going on, Danny felt blackness around him. He heard the group of ghosts around him.

"You cannot be killed, but will feel pain."

"You have lost the true enemy you are and have fallen to insanity."

"You have power but refuse to use it correctly."

"There is no way for you to rule this city now."

Danny felt the deprecating statements hit him in the head and flung his eyes wide open. His body began to violently seize and shake. He felt his core begin to overload. Danny screamed mostly to himself as he tried to force every bit of electrical energy out of his body.

"I CAN STILL RULE!"

Danny felt his body grow still for a moment, the pain residing. His body stopped making noise and his head began to clear. He felt his ankles become free but instead of getting up laid there for a moment breathing heavily, unable to move his body by choice. The doctor started to walk up to Danny when he was stopped by Valerie.

Before she could say anything, a blinding wave of light and a deafening scream erupted from Danny's body. His spine arched for what he was hoping would be the last time, while his body floated about a foot above the table. The energy from the electricity and all of his ghost energy violently flew in every direction leaving the building at his mercy.

The walls began to crumble around him, the ceiling began to fall, and his body began to seize once again. He felt himself beginning to fill with his power again, his body out of his own control as the pain he was hit with began to multiply by ten every minute. He saw the blue sky around him, heard others screaming - even over his own - and felt the building crumbling around him, not one piece of falling material hitting him as his aura burnt it before it could touch him.

Danny felt the pain begin to lessen, felt himself being lowered to the ground. He saw that he had blood running from his nose, but all his other wounds had been healed. The ecto-gun's bullet having been destroyed as power pulsed off of his body.

Danny rolled onto his side, thankful that he was once again in control of his body. He saw the doctor laying on the floor, his body covered in debris, except for the pole he had sticking out of his chest. His eyes were glossed over so that Danny saw he was dead. Danny only grinned at this fact and felt his power beginning to return to him.

He was able to stand himself up, able to walk himself to the edge of the disaster and look up, only to see nothing. The whole hospital had collapsed. He felt his core humming inside of him and changed to his ghost form. Slight remains of the electrical shock flew from his body, leaving him in his ghost form and with a killer headache. But he felt himself beginning to grow stronger again.

Danny looked around the town and saw the people from the hospital. He saw Valerie trapped under some debris, her body still moving as she screamed for help. He heard the nurses scream as they uncovered dead bodies, or people with injuries that they wouldn't be able to heal, or even people who were sitting with major injuries who could be helped. Danny saw that this was an opportunity he couldn't miss.

He flew just above the crowd, his aura still giving off molten hot energy as he announced that he was there.

"See what I can do? You people don't believe me to be powerful, but I took this down without doing anything. If you still think you can beat me, get ready to have a mutilated corpse hanging above the city. I've hired ghosts to begin this process. If there is a dead being, they will be seen by all."

Danny took a bit more to the sky, his voice echoing around the town.

"I hope you see your friends and loved ones dead. I hope you see your world crumbling around you like this building. I hope you've learned how to heed warnings. I told you that if anyone came to get me, I would be able to kill."

He paused himself to breathe, feeling a panic attack coming on.

"I hope you realize that this is true. That I am not afraid to attack or destroy. This is just the beginning of my powers. If this city does not allow me to become the new ruler in 48 hours I will bring it to the ground."

Danny heard a man scream at him and say it would never happen on his watch. He heard the town begin to split in half as some said to let him rule and others said never. He smiled menacingly as he saw fights beginning to break out all over town, people fighting in fear trying to come to a conclusion about what to do about Danny.

"I hope you know what you're in for now."

. . .

Danny blasted himself into the air, hyperventilating as he thought through what had just happened to him. He had lost all of his power and regained it and wanted to kill but didn't want to kill. He had felt pain and peace, scared people and also caused a new war without meaning to, yet not regretting it.

He was confused and scared, his mental sanity was plunging farther and farther away from him as he crash landed back in the small house he had been staying in. He saw the other ghosts staring at him as tears flowed down his face in a mental breakdown. He felt Ember wrap her arms around him, saw Skulker lean over him and pat his back as he collapsed onto the floor.

"Help me?"

Danny could barely hear himself but saw the ghosts exchange glances. They looked back to him as he tried to pull away from Ember, his muscles still moving randomly from the electric shock he had gotten. He heard a few whispering about him but didn't care. He was in too much pain, mentally, emotionally, and physically to care.

"I'm not supposed to be in so much pain anymore. That's why I became this version of me."

Danny's tears were beginning to stop, his breathing uneven as he tried to speak.

"I shouldn't be like this."

"Hey, don't worry. It takes time to find out how to keep away from the pain. You've even started."

Ember tried to calm Danny down, but he felt his head spinning. His body ached as the other ghosts just slightly smiled.

"Besides, this is helping you to not kill people, right? You didn't feel the need to kill to survive today, did you?"

Danny shook his head, thinking about how he wanted to kill, but didn't need to kill.

"See, you've got a start. You're gaining control. You want to do something, you can stop yourself. If you need to do it to survive, then it has to be done."

"Ember is right, Ghost Child. You are on a good path now. You are finding your way."

Danny sniffled a bit, his brain beginning to calm down as he looked as saw the familiar faces around him, each one smiling at him and hoping to help him.

"You know what? You're right. I'll be fine... as long as you guys can help me? There's no way some annoying humans can get rid of their new ruler."

He got a cheer from a ghost in the back.

"And you know what else? I need you to start by rounding up every dead body in town and hanging it around the city hall. I want them to see what they've done to me before I can really take control. We have 48 hours to get me back in control of myself and ready to rule."

"Oh of course, sir. We'll send 20 ghosts to do that now."

Skulker and Ember stayed by his side as he leaned against the wall. Skulker tried to help Ember calm him down.

"You know when I was your age, I was the same way. I wasn't as powerful, but I was just as confused and had my own problem that I had to learn how to deal with..."

"Skulker, shut up."

Danny turned his head and smiled at the ghost he had hated for so long but was now glad was with him.

"Look, I'm gonna need someone to help me make my choices for how to attack someone... you know a... uhhh... umm... a..."

Danny tried to think of what to call him but just decided that he didn't need a name.

"That guy. You'll be the one to help me know how to rule. And Ember, you'll be helping me make the most logical decisions. Those cloaked ghosts can get lost. I don't need them after all."

Danny laughed a bit as he saw the two smile back at him.

"You guys are doing a much better job than they are already."

"Don't get too mushy. You're supposed to be a villainous ruler, don't forget."

Danny laughed a bit more.

"I'm not always like that. Sometimes I need a break from all the power. I... I don't think its good for my mental health."

The ghosts exchanged glances.

"We've got some bad news. We uh... overheard the cloaked ghosts talking about you, and they did give you power... but I guess that the power they give can cause extreme mental issues. Mental breakdowns, insanity, addictions, overwhelming want for power..."

"Anything that can make it so that they have to take your power away and destroy you. It's meant to make it seem like they're the heroes. But until now, we didn't know that they were who made the ghost kings go insane."

Skulker finished for Ember as Danny's eyes grew wide and then began to deepen into an even darker shade of red. He felt his body begin to heat up, the wood under him being charred. He felt his heart beginning to race.

"Get me out of my addiction now, and I'll make sure to be an evil ruler, while still being able to rule."

Danny felt his hands shaking, but in anger rather than withdrawal for once. He looked to the other two ghosts who were looking at him with worried glances.

"Sweetie, we can't just do that overnight. It's something that takes longer than a day."

Danny growled at Ember his hand flaming with energy. He held it to her neck as he stood there.

"Don't make me end you, too. You know I'm not afraid to."

Danny saw the ghosts try to help him before seeing that he would be hard. Skulker put his hands on Danny's shoulders and told him to lower his arm, Ember took a few steps back to try and avoid getting hurt. Danny knew he didn't want to do this but knew he needed to look tough to be the king.

"I have to show that I can do this. You can't tell me what to do, and I demand that you get rid of this now, or I'll take out every last being in the Ghost Zone."

His breathing became heavy as he felt his mind swimming. Danny looked behind him to see Skulker telling him to calm down and they would work things out. He heard the blood pounding in his ears as he saw the pure horror on Ember's face. He tried to lower his arm but couldn't.

"I am in control of you. You will do as I said. And I said to fix this."

Danny heard some slurred words coming from behind him, but none of it made sense. He heard Ember trying to tell him it would be alright and that they were working on it. He heard his own thoughts telling him to just kill her, but he didn't.

"How... How did you do that?"

"Do what?"

Danny was able to lower his arm. He looked at the two confused and still slightly scared faces. He saw the energy around his hand start to fade as he tried to understand what happened.

"I... I don't feel the need to kill. Only the want. And I stopped myself from killing you. From killing both of you."

Ember sighed in relief.

"It looks like you've taken care of yourself. You don't need us."

Danny stared at his hands. His thoughts began to race in excitement.

"Does this mean that I'm really in control? Does this mean it's actually time for me to rule?"

A look of pure evil crossed his face and his voice dropped. He felt the ghosts around him begin to move, his mind wandering around in pure shock that he had managed to do this. Danny looked around, but he saw nobody there. He looked out the broken window to see the dead bodies hanging around the town and around city hall. He saw Skulker and Ember flying with the other ghosts, helping prop up the dead bodies while they tied ecto-ropes to keep the bodies in the air.

Danny felt long, bony fingers on his shoulder and turned quickly to knock it off of him. He saw the cloaked ghosts standing behind him, one of them obviously being the leader. He saw the silver chain around his neck rather than bronze to show that he was a higher power, which he had never seen before. Danny quickly yanked a blade from the air made from his energy and held it to the ghost's neck, his body pressed up against the wall and unable to move, even phase without being stabbed by Danny.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but it won't happen to me."

Danny pressed the knife further into the neck of the ghost that he had thought was helping him, but wasn't. He felt the other ghosts move away from him, but they wouldn't leave because one of them was captured.

The knife slowly went farther into the neck, green ectoplasm shining on the edge of the blade. Danny saw it and smiled. The last thing he saw before his instinct kicked in, was a look of fear as he pulled back the cloak of the ghost. The head was green and slender, almost fragile looking as he saw the ghost for the first time. He saw the mouth was stapled closed, the eyes nothing but white. He heard the ghost mentally begging for mercy.

Danny only pressed on the blade harder.


	10. Upsurge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is here! I think this one is probably one of my least favorites to write since it was a blurry idea of what to do, and trying to keep it based around the plot. It was also really hard to write it without ruining the story altogether. This was fun to write, but hard. I'll just say that. It took me forever to make up my mind on the conversations, and emotion, and even some of the actions - which is really what made it hard to write since it was just me being indecisive... But I really hope you enjoy, and I'm hoping to have more up soon. Feel free to give me requests and ideas anytime, my tumblr is in my profile so you can message me anytime.
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

"Where is the ghost boy?"

"I don't know. He should have been here after last night. We told him we were coming."

Ember folded her arms over her chest as she said the obvious to her boyfriend. She pulled a nail file from her hair and began working on her left hand.

"For all we know he went out to get milk and bread."

Skulker glared at Ember as he turned around to look to the other ghosts in the single-room building.

"As you can see, Danny is not here at the moment. Please, stay in this general area until we can find him. I'm not going to be undead with another ghost king who has mental problems."

Skulker had to mutter under his breath to keep from being hated by the other ghosts. He saw a few of them sit against a wall, some pulling out decks of cards and beginning to play games while they waited for Danny to get back. Skulker and Ember began chatting, Skulker pacing the floor.

As Skulker paced he shushed Ember for a moment, hearing whispering around them. He held up one hand as he heard familiar voices.

"Thank god that kid was affected by the power. He'll never know that we're gonna be able to take him down to look good."

"Yes, we do it enough and then maybe we'll be crowned royalty by the other ghosts."

"It can't take much longer. The ghost child is going to drive them all insane and beg for us to be in control with his mental breakdowns."

Skulker turned and made Ember continue what she was doing. He began whispering about what the two of them had just heard, agreeing that they would tell Danny about it when they saw him.

"I can't let him lose how much he'd be worth if I captured him from my hunting. We have to tell the ghost boy."

After a while, they felt the ground shaking and looked into the skies. A tall building was beginning to collapse around town.

They heard light echos of what they assumed was Danny trying to threaten the town. He sounded like he was mad, and like he would kill if anyone got near him.

Skulker began to pace the floor again, his mind drifting off to what he planned on hunting next and what he would be doing for his next date with Ember. He was stopped as he saw the other ghosts beginning to yawn, obviously bored by doing nothing all day. He told them to move around the room a bit and try a new card game.

A loud thud in the middle of the room made them all stop what they were doing and watch as Danny stood up from the dust, tears flowing down his cheeks and neck as Ember wrapped her arms around him.

The only thought flowing through Skulker's mind as he watched everything going on and got ready for the ups and downs of a teenager was: "What the Hell have I gotten myself into?"

. . .

Danny pressed the knife farther into the neck of the cloaked ghost, his skin beginning to pierce, ectoplasm leaking onto the blade of his dagger.

"That's right. You're gonna pay for what you've done to me."

The ghost only swallowed nervously, blinking rapidly in fear.

"Ember and Skulker told me what you do. They told me that you were trying to make me insane so that you can take me down and make it so that you're in control of the Ghost Zone."

He pressed harder, the green blood beginning to drip from the blade as it overflowed. He watching the glowing liquid stain the floor to the building, the other ghosts watching as he only continued to press harder.

"You guys make me sick."

Danny violently yanked his arm back before slicing back into the neck as fast and as hard as he could. The ghost's pure white eyes widened in fear as Danny moved, glossing over as the head rolled across the floor. The body slumped to the ground, Danny turning with the head at his feet. His white boots stepped in the puddle of bright green.

"I'm not in the mood for torturing right now. Who's next?"

Danny placed his finger on the glowing blade and wiped up some of the remaining ectoplasm. He rubbed it across his shirt, the black fabric beginning to absorb the neon green. He felt the handle to the blade shift in his hand as he lifted it up to his eye level. He ran his tongue over his fangs before letting it slide gently over the blade, picking up ectoplasm as it slid on the flat edge.

He saw the ghosts take what would have been a few steps back if they had feet. He swiped his hand across the room and used his energy to pull back every single one of the hoods to the cloaks. He felt a smirk cross his face as he saw the disgusted looks and looks of fear crossing their faces.

"What? Don't like it? If so, then how should I scare you?"

He heard slight murmurs from the other ghosts, their faces all joining in the same look of fear. He saw them trying to back away slowly, their voices echoing in his mind louder than he ever thought was possible. He heard talk about not being able to scare them at all, not being able to destroy them because they were much more than he was. But Danny knew they just wanted to take away his power.

Danny held up his second hand and formed another dagger to perfectly fit. He held it up and out in front of him, taking a step away from the wall and the beyond dead body.

"Who's next?"

Danny saw one of the ghosts was closer to him and stabbed it through the forehead, his knife puncturing the brain before slamming through the rest of the skull. His second knife sliced through the chest, ectoplasm spraying everywhere. The floor was soaked, the walls were speckled, Danny was drenched, the bodies were coated. He smiled as he saw body after body piling up around him, the ghosts screaming in terror, their mouths breaking the staples and bleeding from their fear.

Danny was only able to laugh as he began to stab one repeatedly, knife after knife forming in his hands until the body was filled with blades. He grabbed the next one and melted the skull with his raw energy. Danny saw puddles of ectoplasm and what would have been body parts had they not been destroyed all over the floor as he stepped to the last few remaining ghosts. He saw the three cowering against a wall and smeared the blood from his gloves and the blades he was holding onto his shirt.

"It's your turn now."

"No. Please. You can't hurt us. We gave you power unimaginable!"

Danny scoffed.

"I don't have to imagine it. But you lied to me, and that means you have to die."

He paused.

"Well, die again, or more... or... still... or... you know what I mean."

An evil look took over him again as he leaned in, his blade brushing the cheek of the ghost in the middle. He poured energy into his blade, letting it grow longer and to nick the chests of the other two ghosts as he moved his arm. He saw a look of terror cross the one in the middle as he was cut right in half, his top half siding off of his lower section and onto the floor with a sickening splat. The other two ghosts huddled closer together, their eyes as wide as white eyes could get.

Danny reached his hand out to one of them and placed it on his stomach, burning a hole through the body, letting it drip ectoplasm while the ghost just looked at it in shock. He began to lift his hands to the wound, his body beginning to shake in fear.

Danny laughed quietly for a moment, his head throbbing from lack of sleep.

"I'm going to stay this powerful. You pathetic little piece of scum. You're the last one, and you can't stop me."

Danny formed a fist with his left hand, a dagger materializing in his right. He held it over the ghost for a moment, his eyes widening and making him step back as he vividly remembered the scene where he did the same thing to Sam. He saw the ghost morph into Sam, the wide purple eyes shedding tears.

Danny dropped his dagger and his hand opened. He gave a disgusted look and set his foot back to balance himself as his hands rested near his left hip. He began to breathe heavier, his mind trying to erase what he was seeing.

"There's no way you're alive. I killed you."

Danny shook his head a few times to try and clear his mind. Cold sweat flew from his forehead and dripped down the back of his neck as he moved, his eyes blinking rapidly and tightly trying to make the memory fade.

Danny saw the colors blur before returning to a ghostly shade of green. He forced his energy to charge on his hand and lifted his arm above his shoulder, the energy pulsing so hard he could barely control it.

"I regret nothing."

Danny forced the energy into a highly concentrated stream, causing the air around it to crackle. The body of the ghost melted to a puddle, the inner contents beginning to char and flake. He watched as the floor began to burn in red flames, the smoke circulating around the room, the fire licking at the walls and torn wallpaper.

"This is what I was meant to do."

Danny half whispered to himself as he watched the fire beginning to spread. He began to pack up his belonging and threw them in a bag, taking it with him to the sky right above him. He saw the house was burning down, saw people watching but not moving to stop the fire. He watched people stare at him, fear filling their eyes as they followed his movements.

He saw a couple of figures way above him, watching his work as he destroyed the house and set his mind to power. He felt electric energy cause spasms in his neck and saw a few sparks fall from his fingers, his mind now straight. He called out to Skulker from below.

The giant silver body floated in front of him, his body bowing before Danny. Danny crossed his arms and floated easily.

"Let's just forget the mental breakdown from earlier. One word about it and you'll be the next ghost I kill."

"Yes, Sir."

Skulker pulled his head up and floated straight. He saw that Danny wasn't shaking like he had been the first few times he had killed, or when he needed to kill.

"Sir. Are you alright?"

"Whatdaya mean?"

"You... You aren't having any effects from killing."

Skulker saw a bit of static electricity cause Danny's hair to stand on end. Danny felt his hair for a moment and thought about what had just happened. He remembered killing the ghosts, being able to feel the joy from destroying every last one of them but didn't feel high. He didn't feel the need to kill more.

"I guess something happened that made it so I lost the addiction those assholes gave me. I didn't feel anything while I was killing them."

Danny thought for a minute as Skulker stood in silence. He tried to piece together what was happening, finding little information that he thought was helpful. He felt another shock - lighter than the ones before it, but still excruciating pain - and almost wanted to pull a lightbulb over his head to show he had an idea, and that the electricity could power the bulb.

"What if it was my brain getting fried in the hospital? Could enough electric shock reprogram my brain to break the addiction?"

Skulker pressed a hand to his chin for a moment.

"Long enough that you were able to break down and realize that something was "off" and to let you kill the ghosts."

"Permanently ending the problem."

Danny grinned, his eyes beaming red as he finished Skulker's thought.

"I suppose it could be that... if the shock was powerful enough that is. If you had more than enough energy pulsing through you, and your brain was fried, it would have been like temporarily reprogramming the computer so that you could change the inner files..."

Danny began to fall asleep listening to Skulker rant about the computers. He felt his eyelids grow heavy and his mouth fall flat. His body began to lower itself, jump-starting him awake before he hit the ground. Danny quickly shook himself back awake and floated back to where Skulker was.

"Yeah, okay. I get it. Now, I've got work to do... so if you don't mind...?"

Danny glared at Skulker, his mind racing with excitement as he saw the town staring up at the bodies from the hospital and from Danny's killing sprees. He saw the kids from Casper gathered around Valerie trying to point out that it was the Danny who had hurt her, and she was trying to explain herself right under Kwan's lifeless body.

He grinned as he watched Valerie be made fun of, be told that she had just tripped, told that there was no way the ghost who took a turn for the worst had been after her and left her alive. He saw Valerie getting angry, blowing off steam yelling at the other kids. He listened intently as another war broke out between the people of the town.

Danny decided to swoop in for a few scared and to announce the remaining 36 hours for them to decide what was going on. He sent a large red energy beam into the sky from city hall, his arm aching from how long he had held it up. The energy pulsed brightly, heat and light flowing off of it more than Danny expected. He watched a few of the strands of ectoenergy disintegrate thanks to the heat from his power.

"Oh my god, it's raining dead people!"

He heard the women of the town screaming, laughing the whole time he listened. His energy gathered just above town before pulsing off in waves, covering the entire town with a red sky rather than blue. He heard screams from around town and blasted his voice to echo around all of Amity Park.

"You have 36 hours to come to an agreement on what happens to your town! Choose carefully."

Danny heard a few people beginning to yell at him. He saw angry faces beginning to appear among the fearful.

"If you don't choose to make me your ruler, there will be serious consequences. If there are those of you who think you can beat me, I have much more power than you think. Just ask the Red Huntress, AKA Valerie Gray!"

Danny heard the arguments stop. Listened closely as he heard gasps of surprise. Concerned mutters all over town were beginning to stick out. Danny laughed above the town for a moment, the entire population looking at him and wondering what he was up to. There was no way Valerie hunted ghosts, was there?

"Yes, you heard me correctly. Valerie is a ghost hunter. If I can reveal my secret identity, so can she. Where is the young lady now?"

Danny searched around him for a moment, seeing Valerie trying to hide among the rest of the people, sliding back behind where Kwan's body was hanging above the street.

"There she is. Let's bring her up here!"

Danny swooped down to the ground, grabbing Valerie and lifting her into the air. You could hear her screaming in fear and claiming that the ghost was lying about her being a ghost hunter as she was lifted into the air.

"Why are you doing this? Why do you believe him?! There's no way I would be able to hunt ghosts!"

Danny chuckled.

"This is what you've asked for, Val. This is what you deserve."

Danny held her above the crowd with a lot of effort to not drop her. He felt her squirming, trying to break herself free from him. He figured that fear would make her stop being a pain for him and flew higher into the air. As he was pulling her up higher he came up with an idea. He called out to the crowd of people below him that was getting larger as the city began to gather more and more.

"Valerie is the Red Huntress, even if she denies it. Maybe dropping her will make her show you!"

Danny felt Valerie grab onto his arm for dear life, his eyebrows falling towards his eyes and giving her an angry frown.

"What are you doing? Let go of me!"

"Please, please don't do this. Please, Danny. I promise. I promise I won't hunt you again. Please, just don't give away my secret."

"It's too late for that. You hunted me once, and here's your punishment. Showing the town who you are is much more painful to you than death would be."

Danny released his grip and powered energy through his arm to make Valerie let go. She began to fall, faster and faster as she got closer to the ground. Danny laughed chaotically as he watched Valerie. He saw her look up at him and beg him to catch her with his eyes, but he just kept laughing and put his fists on his hips. He watched Valerie take a deep breath and press her feet together, her hoverboard forming under her and her suit covering her body.

Danny watched her catch herself to keep from hitting the ground and laughed as she screamed back to everybody's murmurs and curious whispers.

"Fine! I am a ghost hunter! He isn't wrong. But now I've got even more reason to want him dead! Completely dead!"

Valerie turned back to Danny, hatred filling her eyes. He saw people cheering as Valerie sped towards him to try and take him down. Danny only crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, a smug smirk covering his face. Just seconds before Valerie would have hit him, he became intangible and Valerie flew right through him.

"This is pathetic."

Danny yawned as he charged an energy beam on his left hand. He saw Valerie's eyes widen as the beam began to come at her. Before she could get her shock to wear off, she had been hit and had to catch herself from falling from the sky. Danny laughed as he flew towards her at his top speed. A dagger was forming in his hand.

"Are you kidding me right now? You're making this too easy."

Danny yanked Valerie towards him, pulling her mask off and revealing her long curly hair. He sliced her cheek with the dagger, blisters from the heat forming around the cut.

"You think you can beat me?"

Danny held moved her so close he could whisper into her ear.

"Nobody can beat me. Especially not you."

Danny pulled her away and held his dagger close to her heart. In pure panic Valerie grabbed her ecto-gun while Danny held her over the town, showing her off so they could see how powerful he was. Valerie tried her last shot at him, and the pure energy from the gun Vlad had made her for her original suit blasted Danny across town, his grip on her slipping so that she had to summon her hoverboard.

Danny felt himself flying and landing against a wall. He lowered his eyebrows and began to growl to himself.

"Not this again. It's just like when I was a hero. I'm not doing this anymore."

Danny tilted his head to make his neck pop and worked the sore feeling from his left arm that came from hitting the building. You could see where his body had been as he floated away from the bricks.

"Valerie, let's see you beat this."

She looked back at Danny, stopping in pure shock that he was already getting himself back up. Danny formed energy on his pointer finger and began to burn through her chest. He increased the power he was using, the hole getting larger and larger. He saw her press her hands against the skin surrounding where he was blasting her to find blisters around the red energy and blood.

"You think you can beat me? You think I'll just let you win because I went out with you a few times?"

Danny changed his energy to a dagger and flew up to her.

"You don't get an excuse not to die. I've warned you more than enough times. Be glad I'm still having mercy on you and making your death quick."

Danny saw her beginning to look lethargic, her eyelids drooping and her libs weak. She was already losing blood from Danny burning her heart and puncturing a large hole through her chest, open enough that he could see through it. He held his dagger to her chest, starting to cut through the body, letting the blade lengthen itself as he went down through her, then repeating but going up.

Danny ripped the halves of Valerie's body apart over the town, letting every organ fall onto the civilians below. He heard screams of terror as he laughed and called out.

"She is no more!"

He threw the halves of the body onto the ground and saw a couple of ghosts going to add them to the lines hanging around the city hall. He saw looks of shock staring back at him.

"That's right. I killed her when she tried to destroy me. I promised that this would be the fate of anyone who came to hunt me, to hurt me, to kill me, or to take my power. This right here is your proof."

Danny lowered himself in the air, coming closer to the people of Amity Park. He let his energy pulse around him, the town lowering themselves to avoid being touched by the red aura.

"You have been warned. You have been shown. You have 35 hours until I come back to hear your decision."

Danny blasted himself into the air, making sure he left a trail of red behind him as he circled the sky. He felt his stomach growl and stopped in pure confusion. He felt his fangs retreat into his gums for a moment, waiting for him to either call them back out or for him to be more ghostly.

"How can I be hungry? I'm a ghost."

Danny stopped himself in his tracks.

"Duh, human too."

He stopped himself over the downtown area and returned to Danny Fenton, his body tired and sore. He walked into the Nasty Burger and heard a few gasps of terror as he walked to the counter to ask for food. The staff standing behind the counter were in shock for a moment, their mouths falling open, their bodies frozen, before realizing what could happen if something didn't go right.

"Hi, welcome to Nasty Burger, please, take your time to order what you want. It's free for you today, sir."

Danny only smiled and pulled out the wallet he always had with him as a human. He saw that it was one of the guys who usually took his order when he had been here with Sam and Tucker.

"Don't worry about making it free. After I crush skulls of the remaining people who refuse to let me rule, I'm going to be ruling a well working society. Here's the cash for my regular."

After ordering, Danny went and sat down at the table he was usually at with Sam and Tucker. He looked and saw the nervous smile from the cashier as he leaned back in the booth, waiting for his food to be ready. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number for a minute, his food arriving at his table as he was waiting for the call to get picked up. He got nothing, so hung up and ate his food, silently looking over at the other people in the restaurant.

They were cowering in fear, avoiding eye contact, and trying to not be seen whispering. He only smirked as he tried his phone again, his hand shaking as he found himself unable to call the person he had been putting off calling. He finished his fries and looked around for a moment, trying to work up the nerve to call again. He heard Dash crying and Paulina with her arm around his shoulder.

"Weak..."

Danny only whispered to himself as he watched the teens uncomfortably try to act natural while being afraid of him and mourning the loss of their good friends, Kwan and Valerie. He looked over and saw the nerds whispering about Tucker, and the goth community talking about Sam.

He saw Lancer talking to the Masons and the Foleys about his family, asking why he did it, why Danny had to go and kill five students and much too many adults. He heard them whispering about how they had tried to help Danny, but it was to no avail. The boy even seemed stronger and more powerful than he had been before they tried the hospital.

Danny flicked the last of the static electricity from his body as he reached to grab his phone from the table, the metal asking for the electric energy. He saw his phone battery go up and snickered softly. His stomach began to turn as he dialed the number he was meaning to call.

Danny felt his stomach dropping, butterflies fluttering in his chest as he pressed the call button and listened to the phone ringing. He felt his mouth go dry, his feet unable to sit still, and his hands beginning to sweat.

"Why am I so nervous about this? I'm better than this!"

Danny whispered to himself and saw the kids from his old school continue to keep sending glances. The only thing different from before was hearing the dialing in his ears from the phone. He started to think it was too late when he heard the familiar voice on the other end of the phone.

"Hello?"

Danny nearly dropped the phone in shock. The voice was so familiar. He felt his heart stop for a moment, his head swimming in old memories.

"Hello? Is anybody there? Hello?"

Danny shook his head for a moment, thinking of what to say now that the phone call was in session. He tried to say something but only stuttered for a moment.

"Hello? If whoever is calling me doesn't answer in the next 15 seconds I'm hanging up."

The voice was starting to sound annoyed. Danny swallowed hard and took a couple of deep breaths, his forehead beginning to sweat as he felt his adrenaline starting to skyrocket.

"Hey, Danielle. It's me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, a few mental breakdowns later and here we are with Danny getting back into power and back to his ways as an evil guy. I'm honestly not sure why I'm enjoying writing this so much - it's been so fun. I'm seriously getting ready to add more to this in the story since now Danny solved his addiction problems, and there aren't as many problems for him... but knowing Danny, he'll run into some sort of problem or make it himself and then there's a whole 'nother story. So yeah. gonna be writing a lot in the next week or two, and then it's basically gonna be trying to get the rest of my works up, started, finished, or in progress. Most of them will probably start as oneshots with more to come later! Hope you're enjoying, and feel free to contact me with questions relating to the works or if you've got a fanfic request!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	11. Megalomaniac

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me so long, and now I feel so so sorry about the wait. I kinda wanted to see how much I could put into this chapter, but for right now, it's just a short interlude to the plot, making it possible for me to keep the scenes interesting in the main plot. I hope this was enough, and I feel bad having it short since I took so much time writing it. But I already have the next chapter started, so It ought to make things better. I am working on more stories, and I'm hoping to have them up soon. Thanks for reading and sticking with my long intros!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

“Danny? As in, the Danny I tried to capture, clone, and then saved instead Danny?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Oh my god, you’re joking right?”

“About what? I can’t just call my cousin?”

Danny heard a few deep breaths on the other end of the phone as he waited for Dani to answer him. He began to get nervous as she calmed herself down a bit.

“You… You think I haven’t seen the news? Everything you’re doing… It’s made national news, not just Amity Park.”

“I… what are you saying?”

“Danny, this isn’t you. You were a hero. It’s like you’re turning into a monster, even more of a freak. You taught me how to be a hero… only to become the villain? I’m so confused. What happened to you?”

“I shouldn’t be getting questioned.”

“Danny, I’m your cousin, and I’m just like you except I’m a girl. Please tell me what happened.”

Danny bit his lip, his eyes flicked between the people who were talking about him, and he felt his pride, his joy, his feelings of accomplishment rise in his chest.

“I became who I am because I was becoming miserable as a hero. The people didn’t care, they weren’t getting hurt, but I was. I was sick of being taken for granted. I killed Sam. I killed her on the streets, made her body so destroyed nobody would know it was her. A group of ghosts came and gave me a start to the ruler of the Ghost Zone, gave me power and told me to kill off anyone with my secret. I killed Jazz. Hung her with her own intestines. I felt that I was addicted to murder. It gave me that high feeling, and I got withdrawal without doing it. So I killed Tucker. And my parents, and Vlad, and Kwan, and Valerie. Those ghosts that gave me my power... they had also messed with my brain to give me the addiction. I killed each and everyone one of them and lost my need to kill. I do it for fun now. I'm not sorry for my changes."

Danny stopped himself. He could almost hear the tears running down Danielle's face. She had almost stopped breathing as Danny gave off silence, just waiting to hear what she was going to say about him.

"Danny, I... I don't get it. You were happy as a hero. A little pain never got you down. Why? Why now?"

"I don't know... But I like it this way. Amity has 34 hours until they tell me if they let me be the leader or if they want to be destroyed. But it's better this way."

"No, it's not! You don't get it, do you? You're no longer the Danny I knew and ended up liking. I hated you because I was evil and now... Now it's the other way around."

Danny flinched while Dani screamed at him, his ear ringing from the noise the phone made. He barely heard her at the end as her voice calmed down and got softer than he had ever imagined possible for her.

"Why did you call me?"

Danny froze for a minute, his breathing audible on the other end of the phone. He had to think. His hand shook as he listened to his own breathing echo back through the phone.

"I... I thought you would want to come and visit. See my work and all. There's a lot going on here. I keep asking who wants to help me rule and so far, nobody has really taken up the offer. I though... I thought that maybe I would get a little help from you."

"Why would I want to help you like this? I would help you, but only if you were still good."

"I'm a good king. Does that count?"

Danny heard the pathetic humor in his voice and sighed, his body beginning to slump against the back of the booth. He heard Dani sigh as she answered him.

"I won't visit you. Not while you're like this. You can call me, but I won't join you while you're doing the wrong thing. This isn't like the real you. Good luck, Danny."

He pulled his phone away from his hand as he listened to static on the other end. Dani had hung up on him before he could even tell her that he was sorry. He glanced nervously as the other people in the restaurant began to look at him in a state of weakness. Before he knew what he was doing, he had tackled Lancer to the ground.

He heard a loud thunk as the teacher's head collided with the tiled floor, blood splattering up the nearby wall. Tears began streaming down Danny's face as he felt his body change to his ghost form and pin Lancer to the floor. He felt his fangs slide out from hiding in his gums, and his eyes flashed an even brighter shade of red in the reflection he got from Lancer's eyes.

He heard shocked gasps as he began to rip pieces of flesh away from the bones. He pulsed energy through his hands, letting it melt this skin, burn the muscle tissues, and singe the hairs on the body. He listened to screams of agony as he continued to shred Lancer's body, the blood beginning to pool under Danny, the tissue piling up around the body.

Danny's heart was pounding in his chest as he screamed in his state of pure rage, clawing deeper and deeper into his old teacher's body until he had hit the organs that were in the chest all way down to the abdominal region. Danny felt his fangs release themselves farther and felt his eyes burning as he stared at the body, no longer a human being to him.

Danny realized that he was on auto-pilot and was keeping Lancer alive to torture him, the red energy swirling around his body. His hands automatically reached for every organ, tearing them to shreds, starting with the lungs, then the stomach, next, the kidneys, then the intestines, the liver, the gallbladder, the pancreas, the appendix, and the spleen.

He watched as the other students gagged and a few ran to the bathroom holding their mouths and stomachs. He finally lifted the heart from what was left of the body, the muscle still beating rapidly. He squeezed the two atriums to the point where they stopped beating, sending Lancer into Cardiac Arrest. He saw the old teacher's eyes widen as he felt his heart stop beating, and Danny felt his slow down from the rapid pace it had been at when he started to destroy Lancer.

He saw the heart sitting in his left hand, his right hovering over the neck. He yanked his right hand away from the throat, and held the heart in both hands, letting his arms rest in the chest cavity for a moment before he did what began the what Danny felt would never be able to happen.

Danny felt himself flash his eyes around him but saw nothing but a blur as he bit into Lancer's heart, biting away the muscle tissues, swallowing them a moment later. He repeated himself until nothing was left in his hands but the bloodstains from the heart. He felt his hands falling towards the skull, pounding the bone into fragments, each one becoming smaller as he pounded them to almost dust.

Danny saw the brain and began to yank it away from the body, snapping the spinal cord at the base, and letting Lancer slowly die. He watched as half of the brain went up in flames and the other half of the brain melted into a puddle. He screamed as he stood up. He felt his body heat rise higher than safe, felt red energy swallowing his body. He put his head down as the people stared at him, never moving.

He felt his anger growing as he stepped through the blood and flesh. Danny raised his head as he got close to the door. He saw half of the people watching him getting sick. He saw the body and began to lift it with his energy, bringing it closer to him to finish destroying it.

He yanked limbs from the body, Lancer still alive and in pain from how slowly Danny was letting him die. The head was ripped from the neck, blood pouring down the body, the spine coming with what was left of the head.

"You see what happens when I don't get my way."

Danny held the skull above his body, the crowd watching with looks of terror in their eyes.

"I can get rid of any of you without feeling any guilt. I don't care who you are, or how you treated me when you only knew my human half. I don't care how loudly you scream, it won't stop me."

He lowered the portion of the skeleton he was holding to his side and raised his head.

"I will get the power I deserve. This is what my power gives me the ability to do, and I will never lose it. You can't take it away. It's mine."

Danny's eyes narrowed as he swept his gaze over the entire crowd. He saw some flinch as he looked at them, saw some shrink away. He saw bodies dangling above the street, swaying in the wind. He lifted the skull and spine and carried it out the door, prideful as it dripped blood in front of him.

Danny pressed his feet into the ground, blasting up into the air to hang what hadn't been completely destroyed from Lancer's body. He felt his eyes begin to burn again, his fangs piercing his lower lip as he felt the power of showing the town what they were up against. He placed the teacher on the rope and hovered himself above it. He saw the other ghosts rehanging wires he had knocked down earlier. He saw them nod in his direction but ignored them and looked at the people who were exiting the building below him and staring up.

"You see this? Do you want it to be you? Your time is running out."

Danny raced himself straight up as fast as he could, sonic waves reaching out below him as he sped off. He felt the oxygen levels decrease and slowed himself down, seeing that he was so far off that nobody on Earth could see him. He tried to take a deep breath but felt the lack of oxygen making it much more difficult to breathe. He heard his own annoyed sigh as he began to slowly lower himself back into the atmosphere, the lack of speed keeping him from bursting into flame.

He felt the oxygen flow back into his partially human lungs, the air almost refreshing after not having it for so long. He saw the land coming into view below him, the clouds swirling over the green and brown chunks in the deep blue area. He felt the gravity pulling at him as he let himself begin to fall towards the ground.

He saw banners raised in Amity Park, honoring the deaths of the citizens, the ones he had killed. He felt his lungs vibrate as he laughed at the pathetic human beings. He saw others holding signs and trying to get everyone to agree with them on whether or not Danny should rule them. He knew he would start a war, but he thought they would be at an agreement a lot sooner.

He saw the parents of his old friends standing in the street, watching as he fell back to Earth, flying himself over the town. He saw their clothes had blood stains on them from Lancer's flesh that Danny had been throwing to the side while he was inside the Nasty Burger.

Danny felt his hair blowing back as he fell to the ground, faster and faster as he waited to change his direction. He saw the ground coming up below him, his body aching to cause another sonic boom as he blasted to the side, his arm barely grazing the ground as he carried himself to the side before gaining height.

Voices called out in fear below him as he traveled around town, looking for somewhere to call his new home as he impatiently waited to see what who would allow him to take control of the city, and who would oppose him and deserve to die. He felt daggers form in his belt from his pure anger as he remembered how many were opposed. His eyebrows fell lower on his face and his mouth suddenly curled into a snarl as he browsed the streets under him.

Danny's hands moved in a rhythmic pattern as he began to form energy on his hands and carved his logo into the glass panel on the top floor of each skyscraper. The people working there saw him and dropped their work in pure shock and horror as Danny continued to graffiti the glass. He saw that the people working there would be the only people who saw his work in person and laughed.

"Try getting rid of that without destroying the glass!"

Danny flew away from the building, hovering a few feet from the glass as the workers gave him angry glares before turning away from him to talk.

"They're probably planning against me. Won't let me rule. Ah, what do I care? More fun for me when I get to destroy their bodies."

Danny found himself landing on the ground right outside the building. He hung his head and returned himself to his human form. He shoved his hands into the deep pockets in his jeans and began walking down the sidewalk, getting odd stares from the other people around him. His watch told him that if his math was correct, it would be about 30 more hours until he would get a response from the people of Amity Park.

Danny's mind began to echo his feet. His thoughts wandering just as his body did as he waited out what felt like the longest two days of his life. It was as if all the time he thought he had lost on weekends had come back to him now. He had nothing to do but hear his thoughts as he meandered through the park.

'Is this really gonna be worth it? Am I really going through with this? What if there's nothing left to have power over when I'm done? Who's gonna help me control my anger, control my lack of reason? What am I gonna do without Dani helping me?'

Danny watched the sidewalk curve as he walked, his feet never missing the cement path as he took in a few deep breaths, his mind still racing.

'You're the asshole who did this, it's your fault nothing here is good anymore. You left the hanging bodies, but you never actually did anything with them. What was the point of trying, only to fail? Why are you even attempting to do something that you know you'll screw up anyways?'

Danny stopped for a second and looked around. He saw the people backing away from him as his anger caused his body to glow red with his energy. He saw them trying to hide their kids, the eyes wide as nervous sweat ran down their faces. He laughed to himself as he put his head back down and continued walking, his hands still in his pockets.

His body felt the people staring at him, but he didn't care anymore. He pulled out his phone and dialed the number he had for Skulker's technology. The ghost was bowing at his feet before he could even put his phone back in his pocket.

"That was fast."

"Anything for you, Sir."

Danny frowned.

"You don't have to call me "Sir". Seriously, just call me Danny. Just because I'm in charge doesn't mean I want a new nickname."

He laughed for a moment, obviously in a better mood.

"It just feels weird being called "sir" or "king" or "master". Just call me Danny. I won't have a problem with it so long as you obey my commands."

He flashed his eyes even brighter, his eyebrows lowering just long enough to show Skulker that his afterlife would become Hell if he didn't follow orders.

"Of course, Danny."

"See, that wasn't so hard."

Skulker stood himself up as Danny went ghost and placed his fists on his hips, his chest raised as he gained perfect posture.

"Now, I'm going to be talking to the town in less than 30 hours. I want you to make sure everyone is standing outside City Hall when I get there and ask them what their final decision is. Is that clear?"

Skulker nodded as he heard his orders.

"Good. But before then, you and I are going to have fun. We're going to make sure everyone knows what I'm capable of doing. If they still think they can destroy me tomorrow, then they can try. But it will cost them their lives."

Danny saw Skulker's eyes widen in shock. He hadn't been expecting the young ruler to be eviler and less merciful than all of the older ghosts in the Ghost Zone. Danny frowned at him as Skulker showed his shock.

"Is something wrong?"

The way Danny was glaring a hole in Skulker's metal suit was scaring him. He silently closed his mouth and shook his head no, dropping back down onto his knee, hoping not to be destroyed. Skulker saw Danny give him a smug look, his bodyweight being put on the back of his heels.

"Good. Then you have work to do."

Danny gave an annoyed tone to his voice as Skulker slowly backed away from him before waiting to take off.

"What are you waiting for? Go!"

Danny crossed his arms as fear filled Skulker's eyes. He watched the ghost begin to fly away, always taking quick looks back at Danny. He had thought he would be a cool king, with more than enough power, but the ability to have positive relationships with some people. He saw that he was wrong.

"Nothing positive then. Those who follow me no matter what shall be rewarded with getting to live in peace. Those who do not, they will be punished. Harm should change their minds, but if it doesn't, death will work nicely."

Danny felt his laugh building in his throat, erupting into the air as he released his arms from his chest and looked into the sky. Mothers held their young children close, afraid of what Danny would do. He only smiled and let his eyebrows fall lower on his face. He felt his pride well up in his chest as he realized that he was accomplishing his goal - Everyone was afraid of him and was obeying his every order.

His feet dragged him towards a mother who was holding her daughter close. Her eyes were closed as Danny got closer to them, and the little girl was confused as to what was happening. He saw that it was one of the kids from his neighborhood, and she recognized the ghost boy.

"Danny!"

He just watched her as she began to smile and reached for him. The mom grabbed her daughter's hands and yanked the girl back to standing behind her, supposedly protected.

"Don't you dare go near him. It's not safe."

"But, Momma it's just Danny."

Danny smiled at the little girl who smiled back at him.

"Come here. I won't hurt you."

The girl raced towards him, her arms open wide to hug him. Danny laughed as he saw how stupid humans were compared to him. She trusted him when the town specifically knew that nobody could be trusted. He embraced the young girl and began whispering ghost to her, her mom not knowing what was being said. He felt his mouth curl into a smile as he let go of the young girl and walked her back over to the mother.

"She's a good child. I'm sure you'll make the right decision for her tomorrow."

Danny began walking away, a smile on his face. He saw the young girl pulling at her mom's skirt, begging to go see the other kids. He knew she would get to, he wasn't worried. His face fell into the automatic smirk he gave while his plans were going well. Danny knew nothing would ruin his plans before his next city-wide speech.

He flew himself back to the most expensive hotel in town, walking up to the desk and requesting a room. He heard the staff whispering about him before one came up to him smiling, holding him a room key and the number for it.

"The room is on us. Stay as many nights as you like."

He only smiled and walked over to where his room said it was. He opened the door and found a few extra pillows to put against the headboard so he could relax for a few hours. He pulled his phone from his pocket and plugged it in on the table beside the bed, grabbing the TV remote from the drawer. He found the news and watched as they replayed what he had done over the past few days. A smile spread across his face.

It had been days since he slept, and hours since he got to the hotel, but Danny hadn't realized how tired he was after so long. He felt his eyelids growing heavy and his heartrate slow itself down, the feeling of a yawn nagging him in the back of his head. He tilted his head to see what time it was, counting down the hours until he would be able to see the town either be ruled by him or destroy itself.

The clock read that it was 4 PM. That meant he had 28 hours left.

Danny felt himself beginning to fall asleep, barely able to tell what his body was doing, so he just moved the pillows around and pulled the blankets up over himself so that he was comfortable and mostly asleep. The last thing he saw was his clock, ticking down the time until he would be ruling the city for good.

. . .

Dani found herself on the phone with her cousin, fear filling her body and making it hard for her to breathe. She felt her lungs refusing to take in any air each time Danny said something.

When he asked her to join him, she was paralyzed. There was no way this was the same Danny that taught her how to be a hero. He was a monster now. She felt tears flowing down her cheeks as she thought of what to say to him. She was clueless. She hadn't seen him in years but now didn't know what to say to him rather than not knowing what to avoid saying to him.

Her mind flew through all of the possible reasons he thought that this was the only thing he could do, but she found nothing. Her tears began to flow harder, leaving streaks down her face as she told him goodbye. Her mind raced, each time becoming less and less coherent.

One thought stood out to her.

"I can't do this. I'm his clone. If he can turn into that freak, that monster, then so can I."

Her hands were shaking as she walked into the kitchen in the apartment she was renting. She saw the knife block on the counter.

"I can't let that happen to me."

She picked up the sharpest knife she owned and began to cut at her wrists, slicing deeper and deeper from her middle fingertip to her elbow, cutting through the palm of her hand, making sure to trace the thickest blue line she could see through her skin.

"There's only one way to stop it from happening."

Dani's body was shaking, bleeding profusely from both arms. It wasn't enough to kill a ghost, however. She took the knife and placed it over her chest, waiting for the right time. She watched her hands move closer and closer to her, her eyes wide in fear.

"This is the only way."

Her hands forced the knife through her chest in hopes of ending things for herself. She gasped as she felt the knife puncture the skin, but miss the heart. She saw blood well on her clothes and realized that she was too far to the right to have hit the center of the heart. It had only been nicked.

Tears welled in her eyes as she felt her nerves lose the temporary shock and begin to send signals of agonizing pain to her brain. She fell to her knees in pure shock that she had missed, and looked at the hole in her skin. Green and red oozed onto her clothes and the carpet.

A strange thought fell into her mind, and she went through with it.

Her hands reached into her chest and yanked out the heart that had been missed. She saw it beating in her hands and looked in the mirror, eyes widening as she thought for a moment she saw Danny rather than herself. Her two thoughts began repeating themselves as she fell on her side, her heart rolling away from her hand as she lost her grip. She watched as it slowly began losing its beat while she listened to her thoughts, each time scaring her more and more and they echoed in her mind.

"I did it. I made it so that I could never turn into a monster like him."

"But I was too late."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't tell if I feel bad or not... It's been a mess writing. I am going to go through and correct some of my holes in the next chapter, so if you're questioning stuff, I'm trying to fix it now. Don't worry, the plot is getting there. I hope you've been enjoying, and feel free to let me know how you feel about this work! I'm gonna have more out soon, and thanks for reading!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	12. Enervated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me so much longer than I expected and I came up with something more to put in the story here, so now I have more chapters to write! But, chapter 12 feels like a success since this is already way longer than I was planning. And there's still at least 2 chapters left to type! Please enjoy this writing and let me know what you think of it!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Danny groaned as he felt his head throbbing when he woke up, half of his body about to fall out of the bed he had in his hotel room. He saw himself in the mirror and groaned again. He saw nothing but the dark circles below his eyes making him look more than just dead.

His eyes refused to remain open and his mouth was so dry he could barely swallow, each breath making it harder for him to sit himself up without being light-headed. He slowly took himself into the bathroom, splashing freezing water on his face and down the back of his neck to try and shock his body out of sleep. He saw the clock behind him and realized that his math from the night before was wrong. He had until noon to get his speech ready for the public, not until that evening. He hadn't realized how long it had been.

He remembered vaguely that it had been two days since he called to the town that he would allow 48 hours to decide whether or not he would rule them. Two days ago. It was just past 9 am, the clock ticking and telling him to look decent for his next town announcement.

Danny's mind wandered as he thought back to how he had gotten almost 30 from the clock on his phone the night before. He listened to the people next door to him, knowing they had no idea who they were with. His head throbbed again, his hand flying to his temple to keep him from letting his headache get the best of him.

The mirror showed pathetic red eyes, and hatred and anger filled his body. He had been hiding his fangs because they stabbed him when he wasn't focusing while in his human form, but he saw them unsheathe themselves when he grew mad, or upset with how something was going. He ran his tongue over them before letting his right hand poke at them and see how they worked exactly. He didn't need them to be out of his control.

Danny felt his stomach lurch as he leaned over the sink, the countertop pressing into his abdominal section much harder than it should have. Danny forced his body back, leaving his face alone. He looked more than just dead - as if he was the ghost of a ghost. His yawn told him that it was time to get his clothes on and forced him to walk back into the room where he had a few belongings, including the clothes he had packed with him a few days before when he had originally left FentonWorks.

The fabric still smelled like the detergent his mom always bought, and he took a deep breath in as he slid his shirt over his head. Hoping that it would help him make up his mind on what he would say and/or do to make the people of Amity Park decide what would happen to their precious little town. Danny's eyes began to blur from how tired he was, the cold water having failed him when he needed it most. Gravity began playing jokes on him as he began to fall while putting on a new pair of jeans, his leg lifted from the floor and his body falling backward.

The people downstairs probably heard the loud thud as Danny crashed into the end of the bed, his back meeting the floor for the first time in days. He saw the ceiling looking back at him and laughing as he laid on the floor, trying to decide what to say to the public. His groan was audible from every nearby room, a few other guests popping their heads out to see what the commotion was.

Danny felt the back of his head with his hand to see if he was bleeding, but he only found a small amount of blood. Not enough for him to drag himself to the hospital. He heard the people down the hall beginning to leave their rooms, still just laying on the floor and hoping that he could figure out what to do to change peoples' minds. He was going to be in charge of the town, maybe even the world someday, but he needed people to follow him.

His idea was to scare them into following him. Kill a couple more people and being a murderous ruler would work for him, but not for the other people of the town. They were too afraid of him to want to live with him in charge. They would rather be dead than under his power.

His mind flashed images of the bodies hanging over the town before him, blood stains on his suit, his eyes burning nothing but red. He saw his fangs slide from his gums, farther than usual, and the daggers he learned to make forming in his belt. He saw faces of terror, each sole begging to be killed, each person trying to get away from him.

Danny's eyes quickly flew open in shock, his vision blurred and spinning. Ragged, sudden breaths began filling his lungs. Danny's body slowly acted without him telling it to do much. His arms pushed him up off the floor, his body limp and heavy as he moved. His vision began to become clear as he let the blood in his body begin flowing regularly again.

Danny felt his tongue roll over his fangs naturally, finding them farther back into his gums to prevent him from bleeding. His tongue ran over them again and again, trying to feel them, but knowing they would stay hidden unless he told them to show themselves.

Danny's thoughts finally stopped him from trying to find his fangs with his tongue, his curiosity no longer peaking above his want for power. His tongue froze as it was gliding over where his right fang should have been poking out but was instead hiding, as he began to think of his plans for the day - each one making him grin more with how effective he thought it would be.

His head spun for a moment as he thought about how he would bring everything together and yet tear it apart at the same time in his newest public announcement. The one involving hearing if he would be killing or ruling. He thought he would be a good ruler, but in turn, he had bad feelings that he would be the downfall of the earth and would have to recreate it with him in charge from the beginning. He may have to force people to call him God.

Danny heard a small thud from outside his door, a couple knocks following shortly after. He opened the door and saw Skulker waiting on him.

"Oh, it's just you."

"Yes, well, the people have been warned about today."

"Oh? How did they react?"

"In pure terror. Several began destroying the town trying to get themselves cover."

Danny laughed as he turned towards the windows in his room, his arms crossing over the front of his chest.

"That's not surprising. Do they have somebody speaking for them today on their decision?"

"Not as of right now. They still..."

"Well make sure they have one. I'm not letting this have any bumps just like the last one did. Having to kill was fun, but it wasted more of my time."

"But, Sir, they still have a few hours before..."

Danny hissed as Skulker tried to reason with him. He felt his body flinch and swing itself back to facing Skulker, his eyes beginning to flare a red so bright that it reflected off of Skulker's armor. Danny's finger naturally pointed at Skulker accusingly, each second the red in his eyes swallowing more of the white and making his pupils vanish. He felt his fangs slide out from his gums, landing themselves right on his lower lip, but not enough to pierce the skin. His hair began to defy gravity more than it had when he was in space, and he took a few steps towards Skulker, his teeth still bared as he hissed.

"How dare you question me, and how dare you call me by a name other than what I requested. Have you failed to remember that I could end your afterlife right here, and right now, without feeling any remorse?"

He pulled his arms back towards himself, his hands beginning to form the motion of strangling.

"Have you forgotten that I will always be more powerful than you? That I am willing to take your pathetic, miserable, measly afterlife, to torture you more than any pain you've previously had combined, or to make sure you can never manage to disobey me again without debilitating punishment?"

Danny took a few steps forward, a large red beam of energy forming in the palm of his hand with ease, his hands hovering in front of his midsection for a moment before they began to aim at Skulker.

"Everyone who goes against me, who defies what I tell them to do, will be punished."

. . .

Skulker felt the energy as it charged itself, looked into the young boy's eyes in fear, the red glow echoing what he had seen in Plasmius' eyes for several years before Danny was even half-ghost. He saw the anger, the hatred, the deep agonizing mental pain that the kid had been bottling up for the past four years.

He saw the red in the eyes dancing between insanity and pure evil, each second flashing between the two, showing what could bring him to this state. He saw the fangs release themselves even farther, each one on the brink of breaking the skin on Danny's lower lip. He felt the energy grow hotter, saw the jet black hair lose even more sense of gravity as Danny aimed his hands so calmly, that Skulker was paralyzed in fear.

He felt the blast from Danny's hands hit him and begin digging into his metal battlesuit. He felt it chipping away at the metal, burning through the interior fabric until it found Skulker's real ghost on the inside. He felt the pain from the heat, the energy, blistering his skin as he wailed out a cry of fear and in hope of help. He felt his interior being getting ripped to shreds as the energy hit him.

Skulker lifted his head slightly as he heard a deep laugh erupting from Danny's throat. He saw a red dagger pressed up against the bond where his ghost was connected to his battlesuit. The dagger pierced the bond and grazed the ghostly skin, letting pure ectoplasm begin to seep from the shallow cut. Skulker felt his eyes grow wide as the ectoplasm continued to pour down his body.

He felt the knife begin to carve into him, the glowing red blade remove his head from his body. Danny began to pour energy into him, the feeling agonizing as the hot power blistered Skulker from the inside out. He felt his fingers going numb as each nerve was destroyed. His eyes began to feel heavy, barely able to stay open. A strange voice, a lot more ghostly than he was used to hearing from Danny, told him that the entire world was doomed.

"Say your last goodbyes, Skulker. I will always be in more power without you."

The voice began to laugh, slowly returning to a mixture of Fenton and Phantom's voices, sound a bit less insane, a bit more comforting for somebody who was dying a second time. He coughed as blood began to pool in his throat, his body limp while his eyes rolled back into his head from loss of blood.

Danny took the energy out of him to let him die slowly, but the last image Skulker had as he let himself slip away was the malevolent look of Danny Fenton, no sane human left within him.

. . .

Danny looked in the mirror and saw his eyes return to their usual structure, the white showing themselves and the pupils reforming. He felt his gums aching from how far they had released themselves and pulled them further back in, while letting his hair join the rest of his body in the Earth's gravitational force. He saw that he had ectoplasm splattered against the wall and floor, some of it on his skin and he frowned.

"Now how am I supposed to look decent before I give the public some Hell?"

His hands quickly began running themselves under the running water in the bathroom, but he knew ectoplasm was harder to get rid of than human blood. He saw the green goop swirling down the drain, but the color remained on his skin, and Danny groaned loudly knowing that it would be stained unless he could find the right solution to get rid of it. But with his destruction of FentonWorks, it was highly unlikely.

He quickly grabbed his phone and placed it in his pocket, the weight of it letting him know that he hadn't just dropped it on the floor like he had several times before. His body began to feel the cold energy creeping over it, ready to transform into Phantom for a while, his fingers feeling the tingling sensation they usually felt. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling his core form the rings, each one slowing itself as it got near the end of its path.

Danny felt his body losing heat as he floated himself over to the window, phasing through it and breathing in the crisp, cool air in Amity Park. He saw the sun shining on the town and laughed as he knew that nobody would be glad it was sunny later. His feet quickly merged into his usual tail as he took off at frightening speed towards FentonWorks.

He saw the building coming into view, the sign out front beginning to pull off the building, the electric wiring looking like it had been picked at by birds. There were only a couple yellow wires left keeping the sign from falling and Danny saw a flash of what would happen if he just zapped the last few wires.

He saw the people walking below the sign, not expecting a thing. He saw the people stopping to grieve his family, the people hoping to turn him back to who he had been in the past. He saw the sign, moving farther and farther away from the building, so slowly that nobody noticed. He saw the wires, pulling farther and farther from the house, the yellow plastic growing thin and beginning to fray. He watched the sign's shadow move so slowly he thought it would never break, but in just another minute, it snapped. The sign fell to the sidewalk, causing the cement to shatter like glass, sticking up at every angle. Limbs and heads stuck out from under the sign showing the numerous bodies destroyed by the fall. Danny felt himself laughing at the people screaming in fear as the sign continued to fall, unable to remain standing on the thin side. The town shook as the heavy metal frame slammed itself into the ground, more people being crushed below the weight.

The scene continued to replay itself in front of Danny's eyes as he floated outside the FentonWorks, the sign still hanging. He shook his head, knowing he was here for other reasons and was wasting his time with his illogical ideas. He quietly phased himself into the building and found the lab still mostly intact from when he had wailed inside the house. His eyes scanned for the solution his mom had learned got rid of ectoplasm stains in her many years hunting ghosts and having kids at the same time.

He saw nothing for a minute in terms of what he was looking for, his eyes narrowing, wondering where his parents had started keeping it. He quickly realized that he hadn't seen it since he started high school since he hadn't been getting as many stains from their work. His eyes widened as he thought of where they kept all of their projects that they didn't use very often. The door to it was just in the corner of the room, opening to a closet filled to the brim with unusable weapons and chemicals.

Danny began to throw stuff from the room, one blaster, then two, then eight. Each gun piled on the floor behind him before he got to the chemical section, finding dangerous materials that he couldn't touch. He found Ectoranium and strong hydraulic acid. He saw pure Uranium and Mercury as well as professionally sealed tubes of Radon. He shivered, knowing that if he broke one of them he would be hurt severely.

His eyes scanned the room even farther, trying to avoid bumping the shelves that were loaded with unsafe materials. He saw that the back of the room was dark and checked the time on his phone. He saw that he still had two hours before he needed to be at the City Hall. He shrugged and lit a ghost ray to hold in his hands as a flashlight. He saw the room begin to become illuminated, more shelves showing themselves as he moved the light around him.

"Why did they have so many dangerous chemicals? Were these put into the ghost weapons they were always using?"

Danny felt the room getting colder as he walked further into the room, even for a ghost with an already cold internal body temperature. He scanned the shelves, finally seeing the bottles turning into the family safe cleaning supplies he remembered from when he was little. Glass cleaner, dish soap, laundry detergent, floor cleaning supplies, a couple of bottles of the spray his mom always used to dust, and finally the one that removed ectoplasm stains.

Danny's eyes went wide in excitement, grabbing the bottle and immediately flying himself into the living room, the structure still stable enough for him to use it for the time being. Danny began putting the solution on his hands, the green spray bottle saying that it was skin safe. He yanked his gloves off and saw the green stains, rubbing the solution on his hands and seeing the green beginning to fade. His hands found their way to the sink, rinsing the remaining green off like it was blood with soap.

His gloves slowly slipped themselves back on after he dried his hands, the perfect fit making him smirk and create a fist with his right hand. He felt his power surge through him, the feel of it much more natural than it had been before.

Danny looked at the clock, seeing that it took him extra time to get his hands clean, the clock reading that it was 11 AM. His body quickly changed to his human form, making sure all of the green was gone before changing back to Phantom and hovering in the air for a moment. He felt himself hesitate for a moment, looking around the room and seeing old memories flash before his eyes as he began to raise himself towards the ceiling, what almost felt that regret filling his body as he saw the bloodstains in the kitchen, the footprints all over the house.

He saw the ectoplasm in the footprints that stained the floor for so many years that even the special cleaning solutions his mom had made wouldn't remove them. He saw the footprints varying sizes, some of them with heels and other what looked like tennis shoes. His breathing stopped altogether, his eyes widening before he shook his head to remind himself that he felt none of this.

His body phased itself through the building, flying gently in the breeze since he had just under an hour before talking in front of City Hall. He saw the school as he flew over it, his heart rate slowing from his fault in having emotions slow him down.

The students were walking outside, being released early so that they could hear the ghost boy talk to the town today. He felt himself bursting with pride since he had managed to become one of the very few things the town actually let the kids out of school for. He saw several of them hanging their heads and wearing memorial pins for the two high school students Danny had already killed. He snickered as his morbid thoughts filled his brain.

'I wonder who's next.'

Danny found himself unable to control himself, swooping in closer towards the school, landing on the sidewalk and quietly walking behind Dash and his friends. He heard the sniffles from losing two friends, Dash's feet dragging, Paulina and Star holding tissues to their eyes, the mascara beginning to flow down their cheeks.

He saw the rest of the football team not too far ahead, but obviously not in the same conversation. Danny's body began to radiate energy, causing static in the air. He saw the slowed down seniors and lifted an eyebrow, still completely silent as he waited for them to notice him. He heard a few sniffles before the girls began to question what was going on.

"Oh my god, why are my clothes sticking to me?"

"You tell me. Why is my hair standing out?"

"I don't get it. What's going on?"

Dash turned his head a bit, feeling the static down the back of his neck. A blur of black made him turn himself completely around, the girls stopping and turning to what he was looking at as they noticed him falling behind.

Danny felt a smirk cross his face, his fangs showing themselves and his body beginning to float itself slightly off the ground. He made complete eye contact with Dash, his smirk becoming a full smile.

"Hey, Dash."

A high pitched scream released itself from Dash, his throat visible to everyone who looked at him. Danny watched the girls beginning to lose color in their faces, Paulina's eyes rolling back in her head so that one of the other jocks had to run over and catch her. Danny lifted himself a bit more than a foot off the ground rather than the original couple inches when the people he had previously gone to school with saw him.

Danny watched as every kid from school turned to see Dash's scream, noticing the ghost floating there who had been threatening them. He began to give off an evil laugh, the static from his ghost's voice only making it worse for the people staring at him. He began to cause his glowing red aura to extend itself, making him look more powerful as the people began to back away, cower in fear.

"You all are weak. Are you going to let me rule you? Are you going to put me in charge? Or are you going to live in Hell? You've got a tough choice, and since when you vote this time you only have to be alive, you're running out of time to make up your mind."

Danny laughed uncontrollably, his mind focusing on taking control.

"You'll never be able to defeat me. You saw Kwan and Valerie, and Val was a ghost hunter. You can't stop me."

He heard one kid snort, the jock walking up to the front of the group, standing in front of Danny, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked at everyone who was watching, his jacket making noise as he moved his upper body to change the angle his head could turn.

"You think you scare everyone in town? You think you scare me? I've never lost a fight to you before, Fenton."

Danny felt his anger boil in his core, his body beginning to tense as the kid began laughing. He let his power surge and his fangs released themselves farther, his eyes becoming the glowing red orbs as they had when he was with Skulker. Danny felt his body fall closer to the human who was trying to stand against him. His hair lost gravity again, the air around him becoming static. He felt his hands begging to strangle the kid standing in front of him. But he held himself back.

"What did you say?"

Danny's voice dropped half an octave as he hissed his words, the mixture of human and ghost voice making a few of the students flinch. He saw the kid who had stood up for himself take a step back, his arms no longer crossed as Danny threatened him, unable to control his emotion from being told there was a pathetic kid who wasn't afraid of him, and from being called Fenton.

Danny's power pulsed inside of him, his smile revealing his insanity as he floated himself upright, a beam of his blood-red energy charging in his hand as he aimed at the jock. He saw the guy's eyes widen in shock.

"You wouldn't dare shoot at me."

A laugh exploded from Danny's lungs, the people staring at him in fear, hearing the loss of sanity tainting his echoing voice. Danny let the energy leave his hand, racing towards the guy Danny had known as an asshole for too long. The jock jumped back in just enough time that the ghost ray only hit his feet rather than square in the chest like it would have if he hadn't moved.

"You're lucky I'm giving you the chance to pick a side rather than to die right here and now. But I don't have time for another killing spree, I would be late to force the town's decision."

A small chuckle let itself be shown.

"Consider this a warning, kids."

Danny caused another sonic wave as he made a mad dash through the air to City Hall, loud enough to cause ears to bleed and strong enough to cause stumbling students. He let his body calm itself down, his fangs returning to standard length and his eyes no longer just orbs of energy. He told himself that it was no big deal that he had felt emotion for a while, but his mouth pinched into a tight line when his hair fell so limp it was like it was following his emotions.

He saw the park around town hall coming into his view and began to slow down, observing what happened as he waited. The teens were far behind him, but the elderly and all the people with kids had already begun to show up at a frequent rate.

He was already laughing as he saw the people gathering around the building, the smaller kids all gathering in a circle, holding hands and playing around, each one talking to the parents around them until the parents gave in and gave each kid what they wanted.

He heard a defensive mother scream at her child after enough begging to get what she wanted, the kid not even knowing what it was she was saying.

"Fine! I'll make my choice to let that teenage ghost rule us!"

The girl applauded her mom and ran off to play with the other kids who had changed their parents' minds. Danny snickered, knowing that the little girl in the park had done her job. He figured he would bother to explain how he had changed peoples' minds to make it easier on himself, and waited for the clock to strike noon.

Danny found himself growing impatient in the last few minutes, seeing all the people he knew from the town except for the ones he knew were dead. He saw a few ghosts give him the thumbs up that everybody had made it to the middle of town on time and that he could start talking to them whenever he felt comfortable.

Danny knew he would never be comfortable talking to the public. He had always known he was an introvert. But as the soon to be ruler of the town, he had to learn how to talk to everyone at once. He felt his heart beating, his palms dampening the inside of his gloves as he walked forward to quiet the whole town down. He cleared his throat before he began his show of power.

Danny's body lifted itself into the air, his voice echoing around the people.

"People of Amity Park! The time has come. You have been given 48 hours to make the hardest decision of your measly lives. Am I going to be your next ruler, or are you all going to die?"

Danny laughed as the people gave nervous glances to each other. He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket but looked out to see the crowd and figured that they were much more important. He saw shaking hands as they began to question what would happen.

"I'm going to make this a bit fair, you see. Anyone who chooses to let me take the town and make it my own will be left alive. For those of you who say you'll never be ruled by someone like me? Well, let's just say you'll be long forgotten as you won't have been alive long enough to be remembered."

Danny's hissing tone from his rage began leaking through as he waited for the town to quiet down again. He saw the kids smiling, ignoring everything he said. This only caused him to crack a smile on his face as he moved two of the ghosts that were helping him to opposite sides of the park.

"Those of you that wish to remain alive, go and stand on the side of the park with Ember. Those of you that wish to die, you can go and stand on the other side of the park with Poindexter."

Danny crossed his arms over his chest, his heartbeat rising as he listened to himself speak. He felt a throbbing in his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, seeing people look up at him. He quickly removed his hand and yelled back to the questioning faces as they made what would either be their final decision or their absolute final decision.

"Why are you people taking so long?"

Danny saw Technus flying up to him in shock of his reaction.

"Why are you yelling at them?"

"I... I'm not. They're just taking too long."

"Is this your human emotions?"

Danny looked at Technus in shock, his eyes flashing a brighter shade of red for a moment.

Danny's arms crossed over his body as he stuck his nose up and turned his head away from Technus.

"There's no way I have emotions making me weak. Especially not in the middle of taking control of this pathetic little city."

Danny felt his annoyance fade as he peeked out one eye, watching to make sure Technus had left and that nobody could see him as he frowned slightly, his eyebrows raised slightly to show his worry.

"Do I?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. Emotions. I guess I kinda wanted to tap into them, and I had been feeling bad for not letting Danny have the ups and downs of still being part human and having memories that he had enjoyed before he became this complete mental mess. I have no idea why I felt I needed this, but I ended up happy with it, my brain painting pictures of what's happening but not knowing how to say it for a lot of the descriptive portions where I really had an image and wanted people to see what they saw when I was done. I'm hoping to have this updated soon since I'm already partway through the next chapter and have a final outline in place so it's just getting myself to type it all out is what's taking so long. I really hope that you're enjoying this, and feel free to comment, request, and message me!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	13. Abberant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been forever since I updated this, but classes just started and I finally found time to type what was running through my head. I don't have much to say so please enjoy!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Danny felt his hands shake slightly, still thinking about the ups and downs of his emotions. He felt the pain, the hatred, the anger, the guilt, the sadness all hit him at once, the feeling overwhelming him as he watched the humans make their decisions. He looked to see Technus and the other ghosts showing the humans the line separating the two sides of the war he had created for himself.

Danny's gaze followed the ghosts, his patience growing thin as he saw them taking longer than needed. He saw the kids laughing as they all followed Ember, their parents slowly trailing after them, looking back longingly towards the other side of the park. His energy forced him to look up again, a scowl of annoyance plastered on his face as he listened to the screams of the people.

"You all are taking too long! Stop wasting my time and pick one of the sides. I'm not getting any less dead."

Danny growled as he saw the people screaming and running to the side they belong with - the majority choosing to remain alive. He saw them moving as quickly as they could, yet still being slow for him. He felt his body beginning to heat from his anger, the feeling of his human portion leaking into his ghostly being giving him extreme discomfort.

He felt his eye flinch a few times, the city not able to see it while they were in their panic. Danny moved closer to the ground, the screams of the human people getting louder as he got closer. Danny rubbed at his temples, the feeling of a headache beginning to come through from the noise.

He looked around after a few minutes, seeing almost everyone on the side they chose to be with. All except for a few certain people. He saw them pulling on each other, begging to be joined. Danny watched them fighting over to have him as a ruler, or to just die instead. His face lit up with a smile as he let gravity pull him a bit closer to the fighting families so that he could eavesdrop on them.

"Angela, Pamela. It seems you aren't quite getting along."

Maurice took his wife's hand. She yanked it away from him violently, screaming back at Pamela as she tried to reason with Angela. Jeremy and Maurice stood behind their wives, shrugging as they fought.

"You are pathetic! You're really gonna let that kid kill you, just because you don't want to be around without Sam? What happened to revenge?!"

"You're mad at me? You're gonna let the freak control your everyday lives and tell you how to live? What would Tucker have thought about that?"

"Don't you dare bring our son into this conversation! If we're allowed to live by saying we would let him rule, then we can make plans and try and stop this pure madness, before it's far too late."

"It's already too late, Angela. His mind is beyond what could be healed. He's far too broken to be fixed. It's not worth it to try."

"You rich people and your lazy ways, you don't even know the point of trying because you never have to!"

"What is that supposed to mean?!"

Jeremy stepped in front of his wife as Angela continued to scream at them, cursing the fact that they never had to work for anything they wanted, that they would rather be dead than try something for the first time. Danny watched and laughed, each second the fight between the families becoming more violent.

"You think Sam would want you to just die?"

Angela stepped closer to the Mansons, her eyes filling with tears as she remembered the teens who had been killed by their best friend. She watched Pamela's eyes begin to overflow as she mentioned Sam, each second making remembering her harder for the parents. Danny only laughed as he watched the two families trying to change each others' minds.

"That's right. You mention our son, we'll mention your daughter all we want."

"You think that you can just make things worse? That kid is insane, and there's nothing that can be done. It's not worth it!"

Pamela cried as she threw herself to her knees, just begging for it to be over. Angela gave her a scowl, the idea of giving up almost disgusting her. Danny could only let himself smile wider as he saw them fighting more than ever before. He decided it was time for him to interrupt their unpleasant conversation.

Danny floated himself towards the ground, letting his red energy pulse around him as he waited for them to notice. He watched as Angela flinched, obviously knowing he was there. He laughed for a moment, letting it sink in that they were standing in front of what could either be their death or their new leader. He let his energy touch the families of his now-dead friends.

"You know, I don't think it really took anyone else quite so long to make up their minds on which side to go to. You're the only ones left."

He let his hands fall to his waist, blades forming as he quietly waited for a response. He heard nothing for a moment, nothing but silence echoing around him. He pressed one of the blades right between Angela's shoulder blades, just enough so she could feel that he was doing it.

"Are you gonna move any faster now?"

Danny's cunning voice now showed raw anger, his emotion flowing through him. He had hissed into her ear, and he felt her body flinch slightly, tears running down her face as she opened her mouth but couldn't find the words to say what she was thinking. He grinned slightly and gave off a small chuckle.

"Choose wisely."

Pamela reached her hand out to the Foleys, only to begin another fight. They began arguing, Angela pulling away from Danny, her fear almost completely lost. Danny felt the growl in his chest, the rumbling making his voice tingle, waiting for the feeling of doing something besides waiting.

"You are pathetic! You can't do anything but fight, can you? I guess the only thing left to do is to punish you all. Have fun seeing your kids rotting in Hell."

He took his knife and slammed it through Angela's back, the action receiving a gasp of shock as her blood began running down her back. Danny yanked the dagger from the skin, watching it bubble from the heat he had inserted. He saw her grab her chest, blood pooling in the front too, showing that he had obviously shoved the blade all the way through the body. Her arms began to move, her mind not moving them as she stood and lifted her hands to the now gushing hole in her chest, which only made Danny begin to laugh of joy.

He felt his power levels begin to rise, the feel of it warming his dead body as Maurice grabbed Angela and laid her down rather than letting her fall. The look of fear on all four faces as Danny came closer to them was only satisfying to him. He felt Angela's life being taken away as her blood gushed from her body, the pool of it becoming larger and surrounding the three sets of feet, as well as Maurice's knees as he begged for her life.

Danny could only laugh for a moment, his eyes drifting back and forth between the families. He saw Pamela trying to get away from the blood, so he held his hand out to her.

"You're going nowhere."

Her body was bound, her legs tied together tightly, letting her fall into the puddle of crimson liquid as she screamed. Danny grabbed Angela and held her above his head, letting his energy pour into her and hearing her scream in pain. He held her tightly, the squirming doing nothing for her as she tried to get herself away from him.

"Useless woman."

Danny muttered under his breath as he continued to hold Angela and pour his energy into her. He saw the body beginning to blister, the skin that was revealed beginning to swell as the energy flowing through her began to blister the inner muscles and skin. He thought for a moment and pressed the hot, blazing power into her blood, letting it circle around the body, each second the screams of pain becoming louder, the blood around the families spreading farther.

Danny saw Angela was still swelling, blisters forming on the inside of her veins and arteries, the growth causing the skin to grow tight and her clothes to squeeze her skin. He listened as the screams of pain began getting so loud he heard a ringing in his ears as he stood and laughed. The ringing eventually got so loud he was deaf to everything but the ringing. He couldn't hear himself, or his own thoughts. The constant, high pitched screech rang in his ears, time beginning to slow for a moment.

He looked up to see Angela still swelling, her eyes becoming larger than the eye sockets, bursting open and leaving the outer sack to flop against her upper cheeks. He felt his time speed up again, his laughter being audible again as he realized where he was. Danny pressed just a bit more energy into the body to keep it alive while he watched the blisters break out on the body while they grew on the internal organs and blood vessels. He felt the skin grow tighter and tighter, each second a new scream coming from the audience while tears flowed down every face.

Danny blasted the three other adults away from himself using his laser eyes, Maurice watching in fear. Danny laughed as he felt the breaking point of the skin, Angela's entire body exploding, flesh and blood flying in every direction. Danny felt the last of it fall onto him, drenching his white hair and making it red to match his eyes. He felt the body fall onto his face, and reached his tongue to lick it, the feeling making him feel a small wave of energy flow through his body as he saw the people staring in horror.

"Who's next?"

Danny grinned, daggers forming in his belt as he watched the three try to back away, Jeremy dragging Pamela with him as they tried to get towards the crowds, who only split to leave the others completely visible. Danny grinned, the blood in his mouth making his fangs glimmer with a red shine.

"You think you can get away?"

"You think you can kill us?"

Jeremy quickly spat back, the feeling of talking back being his usual dad instincts kicking in, but he saw the glow from Danny's eyes, an angry scowl covering his face and instantly regretted it. His hand clapped over his mouth, but not fast enough. Danny had managed to get a shot in and Jeremy cried out as loud as he could as his tongue fell into his hand, his mouth flooding with blood.

Jeremy saw his wife beginning to pass out, Maurice running behind Danny with a large stick. Before he could see what was happening, a second Danny had appeared and knocked Maurice to the ground, the stick flying towards the crowd at insane speeds across the ground.

The white hair drenched in blood began to float, gravity losing it's control over the hair as Danny's emotions became stronger. The adults shook in fear as yet another Danny appeared, one Danny attacking each of the adults. Jeremy saw what he assumed was the original Danny flying towards him, the speed causing the road to shake and crumble behind the young ghost.

He felt the temperature around him rising, then falling, then rising again. His sweat began to freeze before melting, the ghost giving off both heated and freezing air. Jeremy fell to his knees, his hands clasping together and his pants causing a small splash in the puddle of blood beneath him. He felt the blood soaking into his clothes, a small grimace crossing his face at the sticky feeling.

Danny's hands tightened around his throat, the glowing heat from his energy causing the skin to blister and swell as Jeremy waited to be dead. He felt the area around him beginning to get smaller, each second thinking that it would be his last. He saw Danny pull his hands away from his body, a dagger being pulled from his belt as he took a single step back. Jeremy felt his nerves begin to tingle, the fear flowing through him making it hard to focus on anything else. He slowly tried to push his body away as Danny began to move forward slowly.

Jeremy turned his head and saw similar things happening to his wife and Maurice. He saw that they were still being strangled, Maurice beginning to spit blood from his mouth, the red liquid pouring down his face and getting a grin from the clone. He watched his wife manage to get her hands between Danny's grasp and her neck, breaking him off of her enough that she could once again breathe, but her hands were blistered severely. He saw her neck was showing third-degree burns, the skin completely black where it had previously been so precious and soft. Jeremy watched as she took a dive and avoided being blasted in the chest with a red ghost ray.

Before he knew what was happening, he felt a strong, agonizing pain in his left arm, the skin pouring warm blood down his upper body. He looked down to see his arm lying on the ground next to him, his fingers still clasped as he stared in horror.

A scream erupted from his throat as he watched the blood pour down his clothing and to mix with Angela's. He saw his wife glance at him, only to have her head removed from her second of delay. He watched Maurice sit in pure silence, only turning his head slowly to see what had happened. He saw his wife's head roll towards him, her eyes staring back at him in pure shock of what had happened.

Jeremy listened to the screams as he watched Danny stomp on her head, crushing the skull and destroying the brain. He saw the body lying on the ground, the limbs in every direction as he shook his own arm from his grasp. He saw one of the clones grab Pamela's heart from her chest, quickly forcing his hand through the skin and bones, removing the organ which had stopped beating. He saw the clone hold it to the original Danny who was standing in front him, a sly smile crossing the boy's face.

"Eat it."

"I... I can't."

"Eat. It."

"No, I never could! That's my wife's heart!"

"I said to eat it!"

The ghost's eyes flashed a brighter shade of red as he screamed in pure rage. Danny's hands moved quickly enough that the next thing Jeremy knew was the feeling of heartstrings getting caught in his teeth as his wife's heart was forcefully shoved down his throat. He wanted to vomit, felt his stomach seizing in attempt to rid itself of whatever it was that Danny was trying to put in, but got no results. He felt the pure rage in his mind telling him to try harder, but he couldn't. Nothing was working to get his wife's heart from his body.

He felt energy circling through him, forcing everything to stay within his body except his own blood, the bleeding beginning to make him feel light-headed. Jeremy saw Danny laughing and pushing harder to get the rest of the organ down his throat. He felt his head spinning from the experience, wishing this was all just a nightmare.

Jeremy watched as Maurice choked on his own blood, the blisters large enough on the inner layer of his throat that they were popping and causing piping hot fluid to run down his throat, burning it to nothing and bleeding so rapidly that it was not only filling his stomach but his lungs as well. Jeremy tried to cry out to him, but the feeling of the heart in his mouth made no sound leave his person. He felt useless. The concept of getting control of Danny after all of this was over was no longer even a thought or consideration. He knew it couldn't be done.

Danny's hands clasped around daggers, holding them to Jeremy's chest and throat. He felt the blade pressing his skin as the ghost began to drag it across his body lightly enough that it scraped the skin but didn't draw blood.

"Why are you doing this?"

Jeremy heard the fear in his voice as he sat on the ground, his arm lying beside him, his whole upper body shaking.

"I'm doing this for two reasons. One, I have to. And two, it's fun for me."

A laugh was heard from Danny, his hair still defying gravity while he gave off the glare of red eyes. He watched as the daggers lengthened, their blades glowing with the red ectoplasmic energy that Danny now gave off rather than neon green.

"You think you can stand up to me? I've already killed three of you! You think it's possible to fix me? There's nothing broken. If you dare to think that I need mental help, I'll make sure to blow this pathetic town to the ground. You know nothing, human."

Something clicked in Jeremy's head as Danny referred to him as nothing but a human. He felt the need to say something as Danny pulled the blades away from him, holding them out to his sides and laughing insanely. He saw the other ghosts floating a little bit above and laughing. He first looked at Danny's boots, the liquid soaking into the fabric as it had splashed each time he took a step. He looked back up and stared Danny dead in the eyes.

"But you're human too."

Danny's body completely froze, his hands falling flat to his sides, his breathing stopping and his eyes never moving after finding the look of shock that they were currently in. His fingers began to relax, the knives clanging on the ground as they fell. His mind began to stop, the words echoing in his thoughts as he stopped for what felt like a year. His heart began to beat harder than it ever had while he was a ghost.

Danny's eyes began to water, his knees buckling under him, the feeling of blood-soaked ground hitting his shins. He felt his body shaking, first just slightly, with each second making him shake much more violently. His lips quivered as he tried to respond to Jeremy. Danny felt his body heat rise, felt his beating heart being to warm until he looked down to see himself as his human form, the gravity pulling harder on him, his eyes fading back to their usual blue, his teeth returning to the usual incisors.

Danny watched as his memories flashed before his eyes, the scenes of loving his friends and family, the ideas of school before he was half ghost, the townsfolk always laughing and having festivals. He saw his friends out with him at the arcade, at the park goofing off in the trees. He watched Sam attempt to tutor him and Tucker, watched as she got frustrated and put her belongings back into her spider-shaped backpack. 

Danny felt the tears flow down his face, his human emotions and memories filling his body faster than he could forget them. He saw his parents when he was a small child, loving every part of him, protecting him from the ghosts that he thought lived under his bed. He saw Jazz teaching him how to build with blocks, how to use the toaster, helping him with his phonetics and math problems. He saw himself looking at the stars and being happy.

He saw himself being happy and then his face dropped to his knees, realizing that now all he ever felt was anger, despair, hatred. He felt each emotion beginning to boil inside of him as he looked up from the ground, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide with fear.

He saw Jeremy smirk, knowing that he had finally beaten down Danny with nothing but words. The feeling of being weak filled Danny, causing him to hate Jeremy even more than he thought he was capable of doing. He looked him dead in the eyes and stood himself up, his face beginning to morph to his usual evil glare, the hatred, and anger, and frustration showing in his eyes as they glowed a deep red and his black hair began to float as it had before.

He felt his body freeze in the core, and Jeremy's eyes widened as slowly his hair began to fade to a snowy white and his skin and clothes peeled away from his muscles and bones, only to be replaced with the suit of his ghost. Jeremy saw fangs slide onto Danny's lower lip, the glimmer of blood from where they cut through his gums. Danny began to slowly take uneven, unbalanced, steps towards Jeremy, the feeling inside of him beginning to go numb.

"I am not human. I am NOTHING like you."

Jeremy saw the blood pouring from Danny's mouth as he spoke, the red substance beginning to splash in the puddles already under his feet. He grinned as daggers formed in his hands, his teeth red from the blood still flowing from his mouth. Danny's hands raised slightly, hovering in front of his waist rather than flat at his sides. He felt acid burning in his muscles, now made of ectoplasm rather than human tissue.

He held the dagger in his right hand a bit higher and let it begin to glow with red energy. He took a step towards Jeremy, his knife ending up so close to the body that he was able to put a small nick in the area right above the belly button.

"Or do you have the balls to tell me that I'm human again?"

Danny's hand made a violent jerk downward, a scream of pain erupting from Jeremy as he looked up to the heavens. He looked back down and saw his entire penis and what Danny referred to as "balls" lying in his lap on top of a piece of fabric from his pants. He saw the khaki fabric beginning to turn red, blood seeping through the fibers and threads soaking with the sticky fluid. He felt his mouth begin to open but closed it quickly.

"You don't seem to have those, so do you have the guts to say that to my face once more?"

Jeremy tried to move his lips to say the words but instead screamed as he felt a heated blade puncture his stomach violently, dragging through the entire area of his abdominal section. He heard Danny laughing insanely, his hands shaking as he stood there laughing at Jeremy, who lifted his one hand towards the area and felt wet, bloody tissues falling to his lap, his hands now dripping blood.

"Or how about the nerves?"

Danny took his hands and pressed them to Jeremy's shoulders, sending his energy flying through his nerves, the red glowing just beneath the skin. Danny felt his lips beginning to crawl up his cheeks as Jeremy screamed in pure agony. He watched blisters form just under the skin, to the point of breaking under the outer organ and flooding the muscle tissue with acidic fluid so that everything inside began to break down.

He watched as Jeremy screamed, his body becoming more and more lifeless. Jeremy's vision began to blackout, each second lessening his peripheral vision. He saw Danny laughing, his smile only making it worse, he saw the people just behind Danny screaming in terror as they watch the calamity and torture. He saw nothing more, as he began to see white light rather than pure darkness, expecting that his nerves be what would kill him.

Danny felt the fear around him, heard the screaming in the nearby crowd of civilians, saw Jeremy quite literally melting before his eyes as every type of tissue and mass below his skin was broken down by the acid in the blisters. Danny felt himself needing more, however, and decided that since now Jeremy was staring at the sky on his spineless back, he needed a better way to die. Danny took his one hand away and formed a long scythe while letting darkness surround his body, giving him the hood he had almost felt an attachment to when he was hypnotized by Freakshow.

The blade and hood cause him to look like the Grim Reaper once again, and he stood himself over Jeremy, blocking the view of the bright blue sky. Jeremy's body had almost stopped moving, except for a few convulsions from the nerves being destroyed. Danny grinned as he lifted the scythe above his head, the feeling all too familiar, yet being welcomed back home as he felt the internal power surge through him.

The scythe began to fall, sliding easily through Jeremy's skull, neck, and upper body, leaving him as a mess, a puddle of his internal mass flowing freely onto the pavement. Danny grinned as it drenched the hem of his cloak made from the darkness. The body was split almost in a perfect half, the top making it seem as if he was trying to create a clone of himself but had failed.

Danny's two clones moved swiftly and rejoined with his real body in front of Jeremy, his head bowing and eyes closing until the two clones were absorbed. He looked at the people staring and saw the few people who had decided they didn't want him as a ruler trying to switch to the other side to avoid being destroyed by Danny like they had watched him do to so many innocent humans.

"Does anyone else want to defy me?"

Danny screamed angrily to the crowds, the people shaking as his energy pulsed hard enough to create a small tremor in the ground, a few of the buildings shedding loose roofing as they quaked. Danny grinned as he saw them all give in to him in pure fear. His mind began to fall blank, everything he said becoming almost mechanic to him as he didn't have to think about it.

"Smart move. Your town is pathetic, but it's mine now. I am in control. And I will make sure it remains that way. One wrong move and you will be dead. But for now, you are my slaves, you are the ones who will be used to get me my power."

His eyes became pure red orbs, energy flowing from him. He felt himself begin to float over everyone in town.

"My slaves involve all of the ghosts here too. I am now the king."

Danny pressed his hands towards the sky, his head falling back against his neck. He let out a deafening scream, his ghostly wail giving off red energy at long last, the rings pushing the clouds away from the town. The sky began to warp from blue to green to red, finally deciding to become almost just a red version of the Ghost Zone. He heard screams from below him as he let out an echoing laugh around the town.

He looked down and saw the people moving nervously. He whistled and Technus came to him in fear, having not known just how powerful Danny was.

"Cuff them all. Put them to work doing anything that they will make them end up wanting to be dead instead."

Danny looked away from Technus, a burning passion filling him as he waited for the ghosts to get done tying handcuffs around the humans littering the ground. His eyes filled with flames, his hair levitating even more than usual as he floated in silence.

"We have finished, Sir."

"What did I tell you all about calling me, "sir?" Did I not specify that you would never call me by that name?"

His hands fell to his sides, Technus trying to get out of the situation unharmed as Danny's usual growl rose in his throat. He felt the people staring at him in shock. Technus tried to back up, his hands raised in surrender.

"It's a habit to call the king that, we were taught from a young age that saying "sir" is proper."

"Habits can be broken. I say you start now."

Danny looked over his shoulder to glare at Technus, the red energy being emitted putting holes in his armor as he tried to get away from the child. Danny lowered his voice again, the echo from his full ghost form making it even harder for the town to properly listen as they shock from fear.

"You all will be slaves here, each and every one of you. Should you disobey? You die. Should you stop working? You die. Should you try to escape? You die. Men will be trained for war, so I can take over more of this pathetic little planet, while the women will be trained to do their parts. Some as the ones who provide food - farmers, chefs, bakers, butchers. Some will be in charge of teaching the children what they will do when they become the age of 14. Others will be in charge of cleanup around town, making sure the men in training are well taken care of."

He paused as he saw couples hugging tightly, knowing they would be separated.

"Some will be working as nurses and doctors, making sure the men are alright, that the children are healthy enough to be taught. Some of you will be in charge of stores, in charge of factories, in charge of transportation to make sure we can get where we need, and some of you will be in charge of writing what goes on. Others will be designing the clothes for the men, and making sure nothing goes to waste. You will be in charge of the town... all but some of you. Those of you who have not been named yet,"

Danny paused himself and felt a smile creep across his face, his eyebrows falling lower until it was an evil grin.

"You remaining women will be in charge of reproducing for me. But you'll only be reproducing the children with tolerance to ectoplasm so they can keep this town alive once you all die from the toxic substance destroying your human bodies. And the only way to get kids like that is from breeding you bitches with ghosts."

Danny grinned, his plan falling into place. He saw the people beginning to clump into smaller groups, the girls from the high school all terrified of what their job would be since they all had dream jobs and didn't want to have children. An idea crossed Danny's mind as he heard the whispers. He grinned as he waited for them to quiet down so he could speak again.

"Ladies, I know you are nervous about what job you will get, but I promise you that it will not be the worst. You will enjoy your job, once you find out how to do it. However, since the population is key, all females above the age of 14 yet younger than the age of 20 will be reproducing the children for us. You will start your job tomorrow morning. As for the rest of you, the ghosts will be going around to hear your talents and assign you a job that you could fit well. That being said, the children will be going to school, and the men will begin training."

Danny lifted his hands and formed knives at his waist.

"I expect you all to behave. Ladies, we don't have time for you to be having fun with the ghosts, so we have brought in the finest ghost technology. You will be implanted with the ghost's reproductive cells, and be expected to carry the children without doing anything that could risk poor health. I trust you will be able to do this, and should you fail me, your body will be destroyed and used as the next fertilizer to grow crops just on the edge of town."

Danny looked at the ghosts who now were afraid of him as well. He heard screamed of terror from the other humans below him as the ghosts caught his nod to begin taking them where they needed to be, separating families. He saw the girls who would be restoring the population looking at their feet below them, each one crying. He saw Paulina in the group and began flying down to her.

"You'll be the exception to these girls. You're going to be coming with me."

Danny grabbed her by the wrist and listened as she screamed while he dragged her away from the other girls. He whistled sharply and saw Technus race over to him.

"I'm gonna be dealing with Paulina here. Keep an eye on things for me, you know how this is supposed to go."

Technus kept his mouth shut and nodded quickly, his eyes showing that he was afraid to speak to Danny. Danny only grinned and dragged Paulina into the sky with him he felt her trying to yank away from him, but he didn't let go. He dragged her all the way to a quiet place in the town, each second her breathing becoming more audible as she waited for him to do something to her.

He set her down on the floor, his red energy binding her hands and ankles, blisters forming around her bound areas. As she tried to get away the blisters worsened, spreading up her arms as she got the skin too close to the heat. She screamed in agony as Danny watched her. He walked away and looked over some shelves.

He saw that they were in the wrong room of the ghost lab as he couldn't find what he was looking for and moved them to the next room, frowning as he dragged Paulina by the ankle, her fingers scratching at the floor, joining the many other marks from people trying to get themselves away from the people who were dragging them.

Danny threw her up against the wall, her screams inaudible to the rest of the town. He looked to the shelf and saw what he had been looking for, grabbing the glowing green jar and a couple of syringe needles. He gagged Paulina with a tie around her mouth and sat her upward enough that he could still get to her stomach, throwing her hands over her head to fall behind her.

Danny pulled the lid off the jar, his eyes glowing a crimson so brightly it changed the lighting in the room. He felt his hands throw the lid to the floor, grabbing one of the syringes from the counter. He saw Paulina's eyes widen, each second filling her with even more fear. Danny grinned as he saw this.

"Don't worry. This will only hurt a lot."

He smirked as he filled the syringe, the green substance filling the tubed section until it was on the brink of overflowing. He saw that she was afraid of the pointed needle. He filled two more the exact same way and held them in a fist. He walked himself over to her and plucked one of the needles from his grasp, placing it in his dominant hand and leading it towards her midsection. He lifted her shirt just enough that he could get to the skin.

Danny felt his heart race, excited for what was to happen. He saw the needle move closer to her skin, each fraction of a second becoming more exciting for him. He let his hand guide itself to the lower section of her torso, letting the tip just rest on her skin without breaking through it.

He heart leaped as he looked up slightly to see the fear in her eyes. He grinned and gave off a small chuckle.

"Not so hot anymore, am I?"

He saw tears flow down her face, and her eyes closed in pure terror. He took this as his cue and jammed the needle into her stomach, ejecting the fluid quickly. He heard a scream come from behind the gag, the stream of tears becoming faster and stronger as the pain erupted in her stomach area. Danny let the needle hang from her torso rather than removing it. He found a different area and injected the second needle, then the third in another area. Paulina's screams only became louder, the pain from the hanging syringes making it worse for her.

He grabbed enough cotton from the cabinet and slowly removed the first needle, pressing the cotton over the injection site to keep from getting blood on the floor. The next needle was done, the third soon after that. He laughed as he yanked her gag off, yet left her restrained at the ankles and wrists. He turned away to clean up and put the jar of green goo back in the proper storage.

"Wh.. What have you done to me?"

He heard the shaky voice behind him and grinned, his eyebrows falling to a lower evil position. He turned himself slowly, the lighting showing off an evil grin, causing Paulina to nervously swallow harder than usual.

"Oh, I just injected you with my own sperm, the ghostly plasma to them causing an immediate success in pregnancy. I congratulate you, Miss Sanchez, for being pregnant with three of my kids."

Paulina's eyes filled with tears as she looked down at her stomach and saw a small, yet obviously noticeable bulge in her abdominal region, making it more than obvious that she was pregnant. Danny only laughed as he saw the tears hit her shirt, the fabric now having darker spots on it.

"Why?"

He heard the simple question and let out a scoff.

"You're telling me you don't like being pregnant with my children? That you've changed your mind on wanting to marry the ghost boy from town?"

His eyes flashed bright red, and he turned away. He listened to pure silence for a moment, Paulina obviously at a loss for words. He smirked to himself and leaned against the counter, his hands feeling the pressure from his body leaning on them holding him up. He resisted the urge to burn through the counter. He listened intently as Paulina tried to say something but couldn't come up with the correct words.

He almost thought to turn around but didn't, especially when he began to hear some small groans of pain before it turned into louder, much more audible moans, and Danny grinned, knowing the sound anywhere. He heard a few snapping noises, easily identifiable as the sounds of threads breaking in the hem of clothes. Paulina's moans became cries of pain, Danny hearing the fabric stretching and almost wanting to laugh.

"By the way, with ghosts, the development goes much faster. And from what some of the female ghosts have told me, giving birth to ghost children is hell compared to human children."

He laughed and turned around, looking to see her small bulge swelling, growing, what looked like the beginning of kicks causing smaller bumps to protrude from her swollen stomach every so often. She tried to hold back a wail of pain, tilting her head back and clenching her jaw as the growth began to slow. She was already large enough to look like she was at 8 months with one child.

"You'll probably be ready in another week or so. Until then, you're going to walk the streets and be humiliated by what you've done."

Danny grabbed her wrists and yanked her through the ceiling, quickly landing her on the ground and breaking the ties around her wrists and ankles. He floated himself above her after watching her ankles give out and she fell to the ground, the overactive nerves in her abdomen causing her to lose control over the rest of her body.

Danny flew in the other direction, his last sight of Paulina causing him to smile. The vision of her grasping her stomach in pain while laying on her side, curled in the fetal position flashed before his eyes several times as he hovered over what he now knew for sure was his town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally meant to post this on Friday the 13th, but I had a bit more to write. This got pretty messed up, I know... But it plays a part in the story, later on, I promise. This honestly was a combination of ideas from what my friends and I have been doing, and no, none of it is officially stated anywhere else but here, so like, please, don't tell me that I'm stating something wrong, this is all the ideas that came to me while being alive.  
> Basically, what I did with the younger females in town and having to produce the ghostly hybrid children was like in the book, "The Giver", since they have to reproduce and all, and apparently, that's a job for them.  
> When it came to having Paulina injected and have a 100% chance of her being pregnant, that kinda came from playing "The Sims" with my friends and finding that we could set it to having a 100% chance of success if we had x amount of factors filled. I also used the concept of taking less time from there too, since we downloaded some mods to speed things up.  
> Overall, I thought it would be fun to play with as something that Danny could use to torture the girl that had only liked half of him for so many years, especially since he feels no regret now and torture is common for him.  
> Either way, I hope you enjoyed this chapter and are waiting for the next one to show itself. I know I have ideas so they are on their way! More works will be up soon as well, I have hard copies that it's just taking forever to type out.
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


	14. Annihilation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello! I know it's been forever since I updated this work, but I'd been busy with finals and never got around to typing this chapter until just recently, so here it is! I'm hoping to have more up soon, and I hope you enjoy reading!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17

Danny's body floated lazily above the town, his heartbeat completely lost, the hum in his ears calming him down as much as it possibly could. He saw the blood lining the streets below him, the humans beginning to work as it had been a couple of days since he had claimed his own power.

He stared up at the red sky, the feeling of being a complete ghost making him smile as he watched the people below him. He saw Technus pushing people into buildings and to the fields. He saw Ember walking teenage girls to the hospital and bringing them up to the new maternity ward, where they would be responsible for his new species of children to be created. He knew that there would never be another half ghost like him, only with ectoplasmic contamination.

Danny's evil smirk crossed his face as he saw Paulina walking as fast as her large stomach would let her. Her direction was towards the hospital, his own three children growing inside of her. He almost laughed as he watched her panting and grasping at her stomach in pain.

Danny saw the other ghosts he had fought with for so many years making sure the town was working hard, each second their bodies becoming more exhausted from the labor they were put under. He laughed maniacally as he watched everything that was happening. The town's people were waiting for Danny to torture more of them, but he wasn't feeling up to it today. He felt the need for a small break.

Danny's body began to sink towards the ground, his choice to walk in and see what was going on in each building. See who deserved to die tomorrow. He saw that Paulina was still trying to get to the hospital, that she was about to fall on the ground. He mentally noted her condition and decided what to do with her.

Danny scanned the streets for unworking people but saw nothing. Everyone was being worked so hard that some were beginning to get angry. He saw the angered faces on the people and grinned, his red eyes glowing deeper than before. He heard cries of how nothing in this town was right anymore. He stood close to one of the lamp posts and stared into where the voices were coming from. He saw the worried faces of the people in the building. He knew that it was Dash and some of the football players.

"See,"

Dash looked at the guys as Danny just stared.

"He's too afraid to approach us. He won't kill us. He knew us too well in high school."

The boys laughed and returned to work as the ghost who was in charge of the building walked in and started to yell at the boys. Danny growled angrily and turned himself away, knowing what he would do in a few days. He waited patiently for his time to pass until he grew tired and bored, figuring that sleep could pull him out of his boredom. He found his new resting place, the inside of the city hall completely remodeled to match his personality much better, as well as to give him a place of peace and quiet, the screams from the people outside often giving him bad headaches.

He laid himself down in his office, the bed making him even more tired as he tried to rid himself of a headache for the day, screams from outside already being heard. He felt his eyes grow heavy, the black around him setting in as he began to fall asleep.

. . .

Danny saw his family. His friends. His friends' families.

He saw the other students and teachers he had killed in the past several weeks.

He saw himself.

The human Danny sat off to the side, streaks of red running down his face, bloody tears staining the skin just below his eyes. The blood spurting from his mouth made it harder for Danny to recognize himself, but he would have recognized the voice, the clothing, the hair anywhere. He saw the fear in his own eyes, his human half terrified of what was to become of him next.

He saw the blood on all of the people he had killed who were standing with him now. He felt the tension between all of them and him as he waited for them to say something first, but the silence was all he heard from them. Danny saw his human portion try to stand, falling from lack of balance and loss of blood. He saw how pale his human body was, the skin almost pure white. He saw Plasmius looking at him in disapproval. The words he spat at Danny echoing through the room.

"Even I wouldn't have gone so far as to kill."

The sounds echoed, but rather than getting softer became louder each time. Danny covered his ears as he felt the room shaking from how loud the voices rang around him.

"You're a monster!"

"You were a freak!"

"You're worthless!"

"Pathetic!"

Danny felt his head spinning as the voices around him became mad voices, screaming at him that he would never make it, that he wasn't good enough to be a leader. He ended up falling, his parents towering over him as they saw their now dead son and let blood begin flowing from their mouths. He saw their eyes dripping tears, clear all except for his own. His human half's were still bloody, the red streaks running down his neck and staining his shirt with the crimson he knew as his own color now.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

Danny's hands were now covering his ears as he fell to his knees, his mind screaming at him as he showed weakness in a time when he needed it least. He felt his head spinning as the voices around him became screams, laughs that gave him chills as they sounded almost just like he did when awake. He felt cold air circling him as he watched his own teardown.

The city around him crumbled, the faces of the people in town giving him standard looks of fear. He felt his human heartbeat again for the first time in he didn't know how long. He felt the need to save the people yanking at the back of his mind, before hearing his own voice screaming that he had changed. That the people weren't worth it. That he knew better than to protect worthless humans.

He saw his family shaking their heads in disappointment, in disapproval of his ghost half as he tore the town apart as he watched himself. He saw his own hands shaking at the disapproval before a look of anger and hatred crossed his face and he saw the explosion building inside of himself. He saw the fear in their faces as he let a ghostly wail rip across the area filled with people and buildings, aimed directly at the family. He saw the red energy crashing into everything and letting it fall apart.

The voice in his head whispering that he needed to save everyone got louder, angrier each second he waited. He felt his heartbeat grow stronger, the feeling of humanity creeping back into his mind. His body itched to save people, but he held himself back, remembering what they had done to him for too many years.

. . .

Danny felt himself take a deep breath for the first time in what felt like decades, the sudden revival of his human tendencies scaring him out of his sleep. His body flew from where it had crashed, the headache far worse than it had ever been before. He felt his chest but no heartbeat was left, his pulse being cut off and having nothing. He didn't feel his lungs craving oxygen as they had been in his dreams, and he for sure did not feel the warmth from his human half trying to get him to change back to his original form.

Danny's hands shook as he stood himself up from his place on the bed, his office almost rotating around him. He saw that the clock read it was just a little past 6 pm. It hadn't felt like he had been asleep that long. He looked to see the red sky blurred around the town, the clouds causing different shades of red to swirl, almost making Danny want to be sick. He felt his head throb as he sat down at the desk that was still in the room.

"What just happened?"

He could only manage to whisper to himself as he looked around himself. He saw that everything was exactly how he left it, that his schedule hadn't changed at all, and that he had complete access to his true ghostly power. He felt a shiver run down his ghostly spine as he heard someone calling for him outside his door. The voice was familiar, but he didn't know the name of the person it belonged to.

Danny walked over to the door and opened it, only for nobody to be there. The voice still could be heard, however, and Danny clutched his arms around himself, worried that somebody would see him at his weakest while he was awake in the town that he dominated. The voice stopped after a few moments. He heard a laugh from the same voice and then nothing more. But the laugh echoed in his mind. He couldn't un-hear it as he stood in the large room, the door shut and locked tightly. The laugh almost sounded psychotic.

The shiver ran down his spine again as he stood by himself in pure silence.

"I had a plan for today. I knew how to get this town to believe that I'm their ruler."

Danny took a few steps towards the window, his arms falling to his sides as he tried to shake the voice from his memory and get back to ruling rather than having nightmares.

"To show that I'm not afraid to do whatever it takes to make sure I stay in control."

. . . 

Danny's plan had been to show how much control of himself he had, but since he dream, he found that he needed to show the town, not just himself. He brought himself to the front of the town, calling out to the people to come near him. He dragged some of the teenagers towards himself, making sure they saw that they had brought this upon themselves while they had bullied him in school.

Danny saw the looks of fear on their faces as they waited for their punishment. Danny's head screamed at him that what he was doing was wrong, but he ignored it as he saw the town staring at him, waiting to see what was happening this time.

"Humans are so pathetic."

Danny muttered to himself under his breath as he saw the looks of worry and fear. A small laugh erupted from his throat as he saw the town quaking, the sky swirling to match his anger. Danny stood in front of the teenagers on the steps of the city hall, the teens just a few feet back. Two of them exchanged worried glances, all of them being students from Casper High.

Dash was seen with his head down, Paulina trying to stand while clutching her enlarged abdominal area and trying not to collapse from the pain she was in. The football team was just down from them, Star trying to comfort Paulina while she dealt with an ectoplasmic contaminated human growing inside her own body. Danny turned away from them and announced his arrival to the town.

"Hello, humans. I have brought you here today to give you an example. I heard you cracking jokes about what I would do to gain control, to keep my rule."

Danny turned himself a bit to the right and laughed for a moment, his psychotic side beginning to show, the high feeling starting to trickle into his mind. In his head, he heard the screams from his nightmare and shook them away. He was showing his power.

"These are teenagers that made me who I am today. The painful bullying, the teasing, the concept of how they loved my ghost half but not my human half. That was a bad decision on their part."

Danny turned and grabbed Dash and Paulina, raising them easily above his head with the telekinetic power that was linked to his ectoplasmic energy. He hovered them there. He heard the murmurs of fear below him. He saw the rest of the teenagers huddling together, afraid of what was going to happen to their friends.

Danny lowered Paulina a bit closer to the ground and had the town stare at her.

"This is Paulina Sanchez. A senior at Casper High. She hated my human half with a burning passion, yet had the world's largest crush for my ghost half. I found that she couldn't tell that they were one and the same at the time, and found that I was out of her league."

He laughed for a moment.

"But now, as you can tell from her very large stomach, she is pregnant with three kids. Three of my kids. Just like she had always wanted. To be the mother to the ghost boy's kids."

The town gasped as they saw her stomach swell a bit more. She tried to grab it in pain but her arms were bound to her sides, and so instead tears from the pain streaked down her face. This only gained laughs from Danny.

"The pregnancy of ghosts is much shorter than a human's. It's been only a couple of days and not only is she enormous, but she's the equivalent of 8 months pregnant. This is also much more painful than a human's regular reproduction."

Danny grinned widely.

"And because you thought I was still too human to do anything that would destroy me, I figured I would bother to do what I planned to do in private in front of the town."

Danny's laughter shook the town, Paulina falling onto her knees, clutching her stomach. She saw the usual blades form in Danny's hands and felt tears flow faster than they had been before. Danny smirked.

"Ready for your C-Section? It might be early delivery, but I'm in control here."

Danny stabbed through her skin, starting at the sternum, and pressing hard enough that the bone was struck, blood beginning to pour from the large hole. He ripped the blade down her chest, down her stomach, and down her lower abdominal region. She screamed in pain as the blood began to run down her sides, the color draining from her body.

Danny saw her muscles bulging from beneath the open skin, His children lying just beneath the muscles. Danny felt his high causing his hands to shake as he lost his mental control of himself. He saw that his cut lines were jagged, each second the blood coating on the skin's jagged opening getting thicker as it dried slowly.

Danny pierced the muscle with his dagger as he heard Paulina screaming in pain, leaving a single hole in the muscle. He dissipated the knife into nothing but a remaining sunspot in his eyes, listening to the town's hushed silence. Danny did his usual bit of having a small amount of holding still, letting the screams and cries of pain from his victim fill his ears. He hovered, making sure his eyes didn't lose the hole he had put in the muscle, his fingers aching to do something that could cause pain to the teenage girl.

Danny plunged his fingers into the hole that the knife had formed before he caused it to dissipate. He let his finger slide farther into the muscle until he felt movement before yanking as hard as he could. The muscles tore away from the body, the strings from the muscles dangling from Danny's hand as he held them above his head to show the town. He laughed psychotically and plunged his hands into Paulina's abdomen, ignoring her screams of pain and the pleading cries from the town.

Danny saw his children lying close to where his hands were, grabbing them one at a time to find two boys and a girl. He grabbed the first boy, holding the child by the neck, listening to it scream. The town gasped in shock as he held it, knowing that Paulina had already died from her blood loss.

"I told you, I'm not afraid to kill anyone. No matter your age or your relation to me."

Danny let his energy flow through his hand, setting his kid on fire, the corpse becoming a burnt body, the form left with the face of a scream. Danny laughed and grabbed the second boy, yanking his head from his spine and letting the blood flow down his own arms. Danny felt the high take complete control of him, only seeing what was happening, not having any control of it. He saw his daughter staring at him in fear, her eyes wide as she silenced her scream.

Danny looked at her for a moment, his mind was gone from him. He felt nothing as he ripped each one of her minuscule limbs from her body, letting his hands be drenched in children's blood. He proceeded to puncture her eyes and pull her brain from her eye sockets. Danny gave the crowd a dirty look as they looked at him with fear, their eyes welling with tears as they saw his children lying in front of him, their bodies unable to be called bodies anymore.

Danny just looked at the people, the blood pooling around what had been his children. He felt nothing as he stared blankly at them, the coppery smell of the blood drifting to his nose. He saw the other teens standing behind him in silence, Dash's cheeks wet from the tears flowing down them. Danny grinned at this realization.

"You pathetic beings should fear me like this dolt right here by the name of Dash Baxter."

Danny lifted Dash from the ground and let him be seen by the whole town. They all recognized the jock in a moment and saw that Danny felt nothing for what he had done to the innocent teen. Dash tried to scream, but Danny let the energy from his hands flow into Dash's body and paralyze his jaw so that he couldn't let the sound out of his mouth.

He let Dash's eyes travel to Danny, the smug grin on his face only getting wider as he saw the fear in Dash's eyes. Dash's friends that were standing behind him looked at the ghost boy in fear, his one hand pulling away from Dash and moving towards the other teens. He let red pulse waves flow from his hand which hit the other jocks and gave them severe burns. Danny laughed as he saw Star staring back at her friend from just a few feet away.

"You're all going to pay for what you've done to me."

He stomped one foot and a wave of red ecto-energy radiated from the ground in the direction of the football team and Star. They fell to their hands and knees as Danny stuck a blade he had formed right through Dash's heart and stopped him there. The screams of agony from his parents made Danny smirk to himself. He saw the town take a step back from the City Hall's stairs, their fear beginning to trigger fight or flight reflexes.

The popular kids who had fallen looked up from the ground to see Danny towering over them. The fear in their eyes was obvious as he let a new blade form in his right hand, seeing the one closest to him begin to speak, Danny lifted his right foot and let his ecto-energy radiate from his boot.

"I'm not sorry about this."

Danny nailed the jock in the face with his boot, breaking the nose and jaw while the heat from the energy charred the teenager's face, melting the skin and allowing for blood to pour from the open wound. Danny took his knife and let the blade rip the head cleanly from the body, Danny letting the skull roll down the stairs and towards the civilians watching.

He froze the guy next to the dead body to the ground and walked towards it, counting and seeing five living beings and one dead body. He looked the boy in the eyes and heard pleads of mercy. He felt his hands move by reflex and dislocate both arms on the student. He heard cries of pain and saw the tears flowing down the boy's face. Danny rolled his eyes and yanked the arms off of the body, the boy losing blood much faster than he should have.

Danny saw Star staring and threw the arms in her direction, slicing the guy perfectly in half at the waist and pulling the spine from behind the ribs. Danny twisted the spine and wrapped it around his neck as a way of saying that he had no problem with the blood dripping down his suit. He saw the other three boys flinch as he took a few steps towards Star rather than them.

"You're next."

"Please, no. I'm sorry I was so horrible, please don't hurt me!"

Star was on her knees begging, her hands clasped tightly in front of her chest. Danny only grinned broadly as he shook his head slightly enough that she could see it but the town could not. He grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, the sounds of her losing the ability to breathe echoing around the humans standing and watching. He heard her try to gasp out a few more words but couldn't. He grabbed a new blade and slit her throat, letting his gloves get covered in blood.

Danny threw the body down the stairs, the arms and legs lying in weird positions after it came to a stop. He grabbed the next boy by the shirt and snapped his neck, throwing him over the other dead bodies. Danny looked and saw the last guy trying to get away, but he was stopped as Danny's power fell over him, red covering his body and leaving him to writhe in pain on the ground. The screams of pain scared the town, the kids who were standing with their parents now hiding behind them.

Danny gave a grin as the boy's clothes went up in flames, his skin beginning to burn with the fire that nobody could put out. They just had to wait until it no longer had fuel - which would be an innocent life in this case.

"Can't you see that I am in control because of my powers? Because I will always be stronger than you?"

Danny sneered at the bodies.

"Because I am not afraid to kill?"

He turned himself away from the crowd, his fingers twitching as he felt the high wearing off from using his powers to kill. He looked at the building and frowned, hearing the murmurs from the people in town. He let his hearing focus on each group of whispers, hearing the insults that came from the fear he had given everyone.

He heard murmurs about how he was too harsh, how it was disturbing that he was willing to murder his own children. He heard about how it would have been better if someone had stood up to him. He heard that they thought Dash was going to do just that, but he didn't.

Danny smirked at the last part he heard, knowing that now everyone was too afraid to do anything against him. They were in hear of him killing them next.

Danny turned back to the town and screamed, his voice having light waves of red energy as he shouted, the anger causing him to slightly lose control of his power.

"Now all of you get back to work! I have made my point. If you wish to fight me, to go against me, to try and stop me from having power, you will die. I promise you that. Now go, unless you want me to take down all of you now!"

Danny saw the ears bleeding in the front few rows from the light ghostly wail. His eyes glinted a deeper red as he turned and walked back to his office in the city hall, his head beginning to hurt from the commotion outside. The people had run in every direction to get back to their work, just as Danny had said, but they did it with such noise that Danny already knew a migraine would come sooner or later because of it. He sat down at his desk and crossed his feet up on the surface of the finished wood, looking out the window at the people of Amity Park

Danny could sense the fear and he laughed maniacally for a moment as he watched them trying to work as fast as they could to keep up with Danny's requests. He laughed until his head gave a throb hard enough that he had to throw his hands to his temples and press to try and relieve the pressure. He pressed the "do not disturb" button on his desk to make sure nobody came to bother him and laid down on the couch on the other side of the room, his vision beginning to spin from the migraine.

His eyes closed and he saw the blackness for a moment before falling asleep.

. . . 

Danny's eyes opened to see blackness surrounding him. A rock fell to the pit of his stomach, his mind already racing and knowing what was coming. This was how all of his nightmares were. They all started exactly like this.

This time, it was the people he had just killed on the steps of the City Hall. He saw their faces and couldn't look away. All he saw were the blank faces, their eyes glazed over for a few moments before they started walking towards him. He saw them looking at him in pure disgust, saying horrid words to him, about him, and getting so close to him he could barely see around them. So close they would have been able to physically attack him.

Danny felt himself get light headed, the feel of a human heartbeat pounding in his chest just like it had in his first nightmare. He looked a bit farther back and thought he saw something moving, thought he saw something other than darkness. He looked harder, trying to move himself away from the teenagers and his kids that he had murdered to see what else was with him in the darkness. He saw another flash of light and turned towards it, trying desperately to see what it was that was here. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw what had produced the light.

Floating in the darkness were two glowing green eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story just keeps getting weirder, I know. But I promise it has an end. I don't know how many more chapters I'm going to add, but I know the rest of the plot. It just depends on where I decide to break it from here. I really hope this is being enjoyed because I'm really enjoying writing it! Happy Holidays to everyone!
> 
> -Phantomgirl17


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